Wouldn’t it be great if everyday life came with subtitles? Spuble leverages speech to text technology to create real life speech bubbles with user-friendly experience designed for seniors with age-related hearing loss.
Spuble is a project that I hold quite close to my heart for several reasons. First, it made a real impact in the lives of senior citizens who lost their hearing ability over time. Second, I had the chance to collaborate with some talented people over at Memac Ogilvy. And last, but not least, the app won an award at the the Dubai Lynx Festival in 2017 in the category of innovative technology.
Technical highlights
Overview
Built in Swift with key frameworks including Localization, AutoLayout, and UIKit with several UIView-based animations
Designed for both iPhone and iPad with separate storyboards for a tailored experience
Developed in 2016, utilizing Nuance's Dragon SDK for speech-to-text conversion
Localization
Spuble supported English and Arabic
Speech to text
In 2016, Apple’s speech to text technology was limited, so I integrated Nuance's Dragon Speech to text SDK, which provided a free tier and multi-language support.
Text fill algorithm
One of the key challenges was dynamically scaling text to fully occupy the available space within a speech bubble or full screen view. I developed a custom algorithm the update the font size based on the available space.
The app was designed for non tech savvy users, making user experience a key challenge. We spent 8 months refining functionality and interfaces, ultimately delivering a version that was presented at the Dubai Lynx awards.
Spuble is no longer on the app store as there are much better solutions now with the advances in Apple's speech to text technology. You can still learn more about the project by watching the video below or visiting the Dubai Lynx award page.
If you think I’d be a great fit for your project, please drop me a line at shawnfrank.work@gmail.com