What if public speaking were as easy as karaoke?
Project
Orator: Karaoke for public speaking
Interaction design / UI & UX design / Product design / Business design
Collaborators and context
Arjun Kalyanpur & Karen Vellensky
MFA Products of Design, School of Visual Arts
Guidance from Ayse Birsel (product) & Elizabeth Galbut (business)
2016
Details
Fear of public speaking is often cited as the most common phobia, outranking even the fear of death. At the same time, the ability to express oneself clearly and confidently is highly valued and admired. I created Orator originally to help with my own insecurities around public speaking. Along with classmates Arjun Kalyanpur and Karen Vellensky, I developed a business plan for a product called Orator, a karaoke platform for public speaking.
Conceived as a way to make the art of oration accessible and entertaining, Orator gives people the opportunity to improve their own speaking by imitating great rhetoricians of the past and present. We see several target audiences: in addition to individuals interested in developing their public speaking, teachers and students in high school and college, ESL students, and actors practicing monologues. As such, they propose speeches in three categories: historic speeches, unrecorded speeches, and dramatic monologues.
Demo
Prototyping a physical accessory to the digital product
The microphone accessory combined the aesthetics of classic Shure microphones with modern digital iconography.
Business proposal
