Launch for Voice-based Feedback System Phonic

In the US, software engineers Mitchell Catoen and David Ferris have launched a product called Phonic, allowing respondents to answer survey questions with their voice instead of their keyboard.

Set up with a $150k seed funding round from start-up accelerator YCombinator, Phonic ingests interviews, focus groups and other long-form conversational audio, and uses artificial intelligence to improve research quality. It can be used to record spoken respondent feedback; collect feedback through respondent videos; and record screens to watch users interact with online experiences - encouraging them to speak aloud as they test a new feature, demonstrate a bug, or complete some online action. Surveys can be customized with a variety of 'high contrast' themes, colors and fonts; and customized client welcome and logo images can be displayed in the upper-left corner of the platform.

In addition, through the solution, clients can obtain reactions to stimuli such as images, video or audio; and respondents can answer questions with their webcam, with responses automatically transcribed - transcription services are available in 32 languages. Skip logic is used to jump between different questions depending on an answer, conditionally showing certain sections or pre-emptively ending a survey; while randomization is used to shuffle certain questions, to reduce order effects and improve data quality. Phonic plugs into survey software and web sites, with export data and read-only dashboards available for colleagues and customers.

According to Catoen and Ferris, communicating with voice is fast - 150 words per minute compared to 50 for typing - rich in emotion, and accessible to nearly everyone on the planet. 'Our goal is to build beautiful, powerful, and intuitive tools to make it easy to share with voice. We believe it should be easy to collect feedback, conduct research and share responses, and we hope that Phonic can be impactful in clients' search for answers'.

Web site: www.phonic.ai .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.