Douglas Mann Royal College of Art / Imperial College London Innovation Design Engineering
Achieving accurate tonal variation and accent is crucial in
communicating confidently in Mandarin. However, hearing and
understanding your mistakes whilst speaking is a complicated task.
Voice Blox deconstructs and tracks your vocal frequencies. The
tactile interface embodies your characteristic vocal frequency as a
physical shape, enabling you to see, feel and hear exactly how you
sound. The ‘Master’ block leads the lesson by playing the ideal
pronunciation as you move your finger along its top surface. Voice
analysis software allows the ‘Mirror’ block to listen to you and embody
your tone in its surface shape.
You can iteratively self-correct your accent by physically comparing
the master and mirror block shapes, feeling and hearing yourself
relative to the ideal tone.
This project was conducted as a group effort between Matthew Rice, Yang Gao, Wilhelmina Crolius and Dougie Mann.