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UC app helps people make voices more masculine, feminine

UC professor talks to the Cincinnati Enquirer about new voice-coaching app

headshot of Michael Miller By Michael Miller 513-556-6757
2 minute read June 20, 2024

The Cincinnati Enquirer highlighted a new voice-coaching app developed by an electrical engineering professor who studies intelligent technologies to improve human health and wellness.

Associate Professor Vesna Novak in UC's College of Engineering and Applied Science created the TruVox app to help users, particularly transgender people, speak in a more masculine or feminine way to match their gender expression.

UC engineering associate professor Vesna Novak is using machine learning to study physiological synchrony, the phenomenon in which the heartbeats and respiration between two people engaged in conversation or collaboration mirror each other.

Vesna Novak. Photo/Andrew Higley/UC Marketing + Brand

The app helps people visualize aspects of voice such as pitch and volume in real time. The app is free and open to the public.

She will present the app at the 26th annual International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction this month.

Novak interviewed 20 transgender people to learn more about what they would like or dislike in a voice-coaching app. She also worked with experts on communication disorders, speech-language pathologists and a psychologist to develop the voice exercises in the app.

Unlike online tutorials, the app provides real-time feedback, so users can see the adjustments in their voice as they talk.

Read the Cincinnati Enquirer story.

Featured image at top: UC Associate Professor Vesna Novak developed a new app to help people match their voice to their gender expression. Photo/iStockPhoto

Try the TruVox app

Try Vesna Novak's TruVox app.

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