Bridging Social Critique and Design: Building a Health Informatics Tool for Transgender Voice

This project aims to develop a voice training application for transgender people. Voice training is typically conducted by a speech therapist, and consists of personalized sessions that support individuals in changing their voices (such as modifying pitch, resonance, or speech patterns). The reasons why people may pursue voice training are varied, but often includes discomfort with voice being misaligned with gender identity. Training with a speech therapist may be inaccessible due to health disparities; thus, a technological solution, as I propose in my research, is necessary. This project will address existing constraints to design a novel voice training application in partnership with community members, using a participatory research methodology and combining the fields of speech science, feminist and queer theory, and HCI.