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AwareMe: Addressing Fear of Public Speaking through Awareness

Abstract Fear of public speaking is an anxiety that most people encounter at some point in their lives. Some people with extreme fear of public speaking will avoid it at all costs, even if it means their personal, professional, and social growth may be hindered.

AwareMe incorporates aspects of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and good public speaking practices to make an empowering assistive technology for people who suffer from different levels of public speaking anxiety. AwareMe is a device that provides feedback on voice pitch, filler words, and words per minute during presentation practice. It has a detachable wristband, worn during presentations, that provides visual and haptic feedback. Our approach differs from existing solutions because it focuses on bringing the users’ attention to how their anxiety influences their speech patterns; this awareness helps them to directly improve their public speaking skills.

Author Keywords Fear of speech; glossophobia; speaking anxiety; speech disfluency; cognitive behavioral psychology; wearable.

ACM Classification Keywords H.5.m [Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI)]: Miscellaneous;

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Mark Bubel University College London UCL Interaction Centre WC1E 6BT, UK mark.jr.15@ucl.ac.uk Ruiwen Jiang University College London UCL Interaction Centre WC1E 6BT, UK r.jiang@ucl.ac.uk Christine H. Lee University College London UCL Interaction Centre WC1E 6BT, UK christine.lee.15@ucl.ac.uk

Wen Shi University College London UCL Interaction Centre WC1E 6BT, UK shi.wen.15@ucl.ac.uk Audrey Tse University College London UCL Interaction Centre WC1E 6BT, UK audrey.tse.15@ucl.ac.uk

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Introduction Fear of public speaking is unique in that it is invisible to other people. Further, there may be a stigma attached to fear of public speaking, even though research shows that this fear affects a wide range of people (Stein, Walker & Forde, 1996).

We chose to design an assistive technology for this user group because we think it is an anxiety that is overlooked in favor of what others may consider traditional physical disabilities. Our user group includes anyone with a public speaking fear that wants to improve; however, people with years of experience in public speaking may not find AwareMe useful.

Our initial research demonstrated that solutions already exist to help reduce fear of public speaking. These solutions are split between Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) treatments and virtual reality (VR) stimulations meant to acclimate the user to public speaking. CBT treatments include conventional therapy sessions as well as novel, online-based therapy that companies and academics such as Joyable and “Talk to Me” want to change (Joyable, 2015; Botella et al., 2010). Bloomberg has created VR stimulations using Facebook’s Oculus Rift, although our interview participants expressed doubt in whether VR stimulation can actually replace real life practice (Tech Insider, 2015). In addition, therapy sessions and VR technology are rather expensive and sometimes inaccessible.

Instead of designing an assistive technology that attempted to replace CBT, we decided to help reduce anxiety by 1) informing the users of their speech patterns during presentation practice and 2) bringing

awareness to users during speeches through visual and haptic feedback.

Research and Establishing Requirements We immediately delved into understanding all types of public speaking anxiety. We conducted semi-structured interviews with ten individuals with a range of public speaking anxieties and professions. An affinity diagram (Figure 1) was used to organize our data and to allow themes to emerge. We noticed participants spoke about their anxieties in three steps: pre-presentation preparation, during presentation, and post-presentation review. Participants stated they dedicated most of their time to the preparation stage, so we decided to create a design dedicated to the preparation process.

We gained a psychological viewpoint during an interview with a therapist specializing in CBT, a proven method to cure a person of anxiety disorders. The therapist introduced us to the Five Areas Model that aims to alter patients’ unhelpful thinking styles so that emotions, physical feelings, and behavior can subsequently be altered for the better (William & Garland, 2002). It was only after our meeting with the therapist that we realized fear of public speaking – a social anxiety – cannot be easily nor quickly cured with technology. With this knowledge, we started thinking about how our design could include a CBT aspect during the preparation phase mentioned above.

We then conducted a small-scale ethnographic study at a Toastmasters meeting, an almost century old nonprofit that strives to improve its members’ comfort in front of an audience. We also attended a “Public Speaking for Beginners” Meetup event, which consisted of impromptu speeches and other activities to help

Affinity Diagram: Key Findings

1) Everyone practices a lot. 2) Interaction with audience / eye contact / body language / feedback is important. 3) Everyone experiences some form of physical sensation before a speech. 4) Everyone engages in some kind of pre-speech preparation. 5) Fear of being judged. 6) Tools on stage (microphone, podium, teleprompter, clicker). 7) Post performance: relief and little reflection.

Figure 1: Preparation section.

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participants overcome their fears. We found it helpful to watch both novice and experienced speakers practice in front of audiences because we were able to watch a variety of performers’ body language, speaking styles, and audience reactions.

The research we conducted resulted in a set of user requirements that called for a design that was inconspicuous for the user and audience, lowered the users’ anxiety through creating acute awareness, and improved the users’ public speaking skills.

Design Process We wanted to create a tangible object separate from mobile phones, computers, or tablets because those items were often the source of anxiety (Thomée, Härenstam, & Hagberg, 2011).

Originating from the first round of interviews mentioned above, we started off with sketches and three storyboards of our preliminary ideas that included:

§ Virtual Reality Glasses

These glasses would alter the speaker’s perception of the audience’s body language. We got this idea while reading a paper about the use of VR for public speaking (Slater et al., 2006).

§ Motion Sensor Game that would implement power posing exercises, karaoke-style pacing exercises to improve on pacing and volume of speech, and a “Whac-a-Mole” inspired eye contact exercise to establish and maintain appropriate distribution of eye contact with the audience. We found that these techniques were important in building a rapport with the audience (Argyle & Dean, 1965).

§ Wearable Earpiece that plays on the idea of augmenting the socially-accepted earpiece with pace of speech monitor, heart rate, and breathing rate. We found that some of these factors are common physical symptoms for a person with anxiety (NHS, 2014).

We conducted informal interviews using these three storyboards, but we received mixed feedback. Several rounds of storyboarding, interviewing, and iterating helped us to finally realize that one cannot reliably and quickly cure public speaking anxiety without the guidance of a trained professional or expensive equipment that may be too intrusive for our users.

We extracted that one could reliably predict rising anxiety through different measurements of speech and voice while reading academic papers about anxiety and voice analysis. In particular, voice pitch and number of pauses within a speech can accurately predict a person’s level of anxiety during a speech (Laukka et al., 2008).

Our user interviews helped to further refine our final design. We noticed in early interviews that people afraid of public speaking practiced so much that they could robotically repeat the speech to the audience with little thought to body language or audience emotions. We found that their anxiety blocked them from being fully aware of themselves and how they sounded during a speech. This allows for a huge opportunity to reduce anxiety and improve the quality of our users’ presentation.

Figure 2: An early sketch of AwareMe.

Figure 3: First physical prototype of AwareMe base device, a balloon filled with clay to stimulate a malleable feel.

Figure 4: Second physical prototype of AwareMe.

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At this point, our group was confident that we would design something unobtrusive, inexpensive, appealing to wear, and that provides awareness to the user.

AwareMe Using low fidelity techniques, we came up with a device that has two parts: a base with integrated UI and wearable wristband that has haptic motors and LED display (Figure 2, 3, & 4).

The base device first trains itself to recognize the user’s speech patterns and thus predict anxiety by listening to the user speak during a short initial training session (Figure 6). The user then inputs their performance time length, completes a breathing exercise, and records their practice. While the user is practicing, the base device changes colors to give the user visual feedback about the amount of time left for the speech (Figure 5), a function inspired by Toastmasters. After recording, the base device provides feedback and advice on three key aspects of speech: voice pitch, filler words, and words per minute. The user can continue to practice with AwareMe to improve on certain aspects such as varying pitch in their performance delivery, lowering their words per minute, or trying to eliminate filler words. This feedback is not consulted while giving a

speech as it would be too distracting for a user with speech anxiety. It is only for the user’s self improvement after the speech.

The wearable wristband is used while giving a speech (Figure 7). It provides the same visual feedback using color to indicate time left; however, one can only see the LED color strip underside one’s wrist for discretion. We chose to design the LED display under the wrist because our users were very concerned with privacy and not looking inexperienced to the audience. As well as color, the wristband also provides one haptic ping when it turns amber, and two pings when it turns red to signify that time has run out. This was another design decision directly influenced by user interviews. The third function of the wearable is to provide a soothing haptic feedback when the device detects the user’s anxiety may be rising based on its voice recognition capacity.

These functions were quickly built using existing technologies to create a working prototype for testing. Several iOS devices and software that transformed our low fidelity user interface (UI) screens into a clickable experience were key to this process (Figure 10).

User Testing We recruited five users from a London-based Toastmasters Chapter to test our prototype. We created three tasks to test the main functions of our device. We were interested in learning if the user could train the device, start practice mode, and give a speech with AwareMe wristband.

Each participant sat with two members of our group and used the AwareMe device to try and execute our

Figure 6: 3D model of AwareMe. Figure 7: AwareMe Wristband.

Figure 5: AwareMe changes colors to signify the time left.

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user tasks. We encouraged them to use the think aloud method during the testing. This method yielded interesting data even with a small group of people and it allowed us to understand their thought processes attached to their actions (Fonteyn, Kuipers & Grobe, 1993). As part of the final task, the users had to give a two-minute speech while wearing the device. Before and after this task, we asked a list of open-ended questions to further understand their thoughts and feelings of the experience. A sample of these questions included:

1. Do you understand why you had to set up the device before use?

2. How did you feel wearing something on your wrist?

3. Do you have suggestions to change the haptic feedback?

After the speeches, one of our group members conducted semi-structured interviews with the participants (Figure 9). These interviews gave us invaluable feedback about how to change AwareMe. One change was that the haptic feedback pings would be used to signify how much time is left rather than anxiety notifications. We also decided to allow the haptic feedback to be turned on and off. Users also commented that they did not like the abrupt vibration pattern, so we decided on a soothing, sweeping pattern that will speed up or slow down depending on the rate of speech.

From these new requirements, we created 3D models to display an HD image of our device (Figures 5 & 6).

Figure 9: User testing AwareMe with Toastmasters Discussion AwareMe specifically highlights time and anxiety signifiers in an inconspicuous way without requiring a long time commitment to learn or use. We consciously incorporated existing public speaking anxiety solutions, and aimed to bring the users’ attention to the anxiety, so that they can take the proper measures to reduce the fear.

Our challenge during the user centered design (UCD) process was realizing that social anxiety cannot be easily cured and it is hard to detect from a research prospective because of ethical reasons. Storyboarding was absolutely essential to exploring a range of ideas because our design solutions changed several times. In fact, our design process closely modeled the design generation and convergence model (Figure 8) as introduced in Sketching User Experiences Workbook (Greenberg et al., 2011).

Our design proved to be useful during our usability testing with Toastmasters, but we believe that further

User Testing Feedback

“I think it would be quite good actually. Especially for people who would be learning in the first instance, so learning how to control their tempo and their voice. I think it would be useful.”

“So you could even be as clever as: if you’re too fast, it’s a fast vibration, if you’re too slow, it’s a slow vibration. So you could be quite dynamic with it.”

“When you set it up, if you could customize the vibrations, you can have another buzz that tells you if you’re saying too many ums and ahs, if you can customize the vibrations, it would be good.”

Figure 8: Design process

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would want to test the device in a real-life public speaking situation, in order to observe the speaker’s natural behavior. We could not completely replicate this environment during usability testing due to time constraints.

One main function of the device that we want to validate further is the haptic feedback of rising anxiety level to determine if it is too distracting. We would also want to explore tracking users’ progress through a website or mobile application. Ultimately, AwareMe is a useful device for any user who wants to target and improve their speech patterns.

Acknowledgements We would like to thank our primary mentor, Rose Johnson, and our preliminary mentor, Geraint Jones, for providing helpful resources and advice. We would also like to express our gratitude to the Toastmasters group who agreed to test our prototype and gave us invaluable feedback.

References 1. Argyle, M & Dean, J. (1965). Eye-Contact, Distance

and Affiliation. Sociometry, 28(3), 289-304. 2. Botella et al.. (2010). An Internet-Based Self-Help

Treatment for Fear of Public Speaking: A Controlled Trial. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 13(4), 407-421.

3. Fonteyn, M. E., Kuipers, B., & Grobe, S. J. (1993). A description of think aloud method and protocol analysis. Qualitative Health Research, 3(4), 430-441.

4. Greenberg, S., Carpendale, S., Marquardt, N., & Buxton, B. (2011). Sketching user experiences: The workbook. Elsevier.

5. Joyable. (2015). Www.Joyable.com. Retrieved 28 November, 2015, from https://joyable.com/

6. Laukka, P., Linnman, C., Åhs, F., Pissiota, A., Frans, Ö., Faria, V., ... & Furmark, T. (2008). In a nervous voice: Acoustic analysis and perception of anxiety in social phobics’ speech. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 32(4), 195-214.

7. NHS. (2014). NHS UK. Retrieved 28 November, 2015, from http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Anxiety/Pages/Symptoms.aspx

8. Slater, M., Pertaub, D., Barker, C., & Clark, D. (2006). An Experimental Study on Fear of Public Speaking Using a Virtual Environment. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 9(5). doi:10.1089/cpb.2006.9.627.

9. Stein, M.B, Walker, J.R & Forde, D.R. (1996). Public-Speaking Fears in a Community Sample Prevalence, Impact on Functioning, and Diagnostic Classification. Arch Gen Psychiatry, 53(2), 169-174.

10. Tech insider, M.W. (2015). Tech Insider. Retrieved 29 November, 2015, from http://www.techinsider.io/bloomberg-thinks-virtual-reality-can-help-your-public-speaking-skills-2015-6

11. Thomée, S., Härenstam, A., & Hagberg, M. (2011). Mobile phone use and stress, sleep disturbances, and symptoms of depression among young adults-a prospective cohort study. BMC public health, 11(1), 66.

12. Williams, C & Garland, A. (2002). A cognitive–behavioural therapy assessment model for use in everyday clinical practice. Advances in Psychiatric Treatment , 8(3), 172-179.

Pitch is the highs and lows of one’s tone. The interface

displays user’s pitch along with the optimal pitch range.

Filler words (i.e. ‘um’ ‘like’ ‘uh’) can sound unprofessional and

distracting. The interface displays the number of filler words spoken

per minute by the user.

This interface how fast users speak in comparison to the

optimal rate of speech.

Figure 10: UI screens