Ask HN: How would you use a tool that calls you and asks you questions?

[mfiggy]

I built software to help me understand and better organize my thoughts. It works as an automated system that will call me and read a script, and respond based on voice input. It uses text-to-speech and speech-to-text to adapt responses to what I say.

For example, I can go through a script to help me prioritize my day and what to work on. Since I clarify my thinking best by speaking, it works well, and the script being read out keeps me on track and accountable. The app also transcribes my answers so I can easily refer back to them.

I'm curious, Hacker News - is this something you would find useful? How would you like to use it; what types of scripts would you write?

[colinhines]

I love this, and I would pay for it.

This is a bit personal but I’ll share it. I would use this to record myself sharing items such as motivational conversations, topics that I would like to explore more deeply, or nudges to perform certain tasks that day. Let me take you through a scenario. It would call me first thing in the morning, thus wake me up, and say some motivational things that I had recorded months before (and maybe some facts about the day or other interesting items that are personal to me). I will record these months in advance so that I wouldn’t necessarily remember them (I have a terrible memory, which is partly why I want this). Hearing myself talk to myself in only the way that I know how and then having my memory jogged for whatever it is that I put on the recording would start my day off pretty well - I could also then direct myself to do certain things that are on the schedule but that I don’t do every day such as working out, taking care of certain animal responsibilities,or reminders to take care of certain family things that I only need to take care of every so often.

I used to carry a mini disc player around that I had recorded specific tracks for this same concept, and then I moved to recordings on the phone, but it’s just so clunky. I have to remember to look up the recording, name the recording in some manner that I’m going to know which ones to pick, and a little bit of surprise around having a random recording is just notThere. Ideally, this would be set up to call me and play a randomly selected recording, and then by way of voice recognition or just pressing a button it would play a randomly selected recording from a different category or grouping.

I would definitely be willing to work with you to codevelop my use case if you would be open to it. Do you have a suggested price that you are interested in getting for using it?

[mfiggy]

Thank you so much for sharing!

I'm wondering if you'd like the app to prompt you to record specific sorts of things? Or if you would remember to use the app whenever there's something you'd like to play to yourself in the future, and just focus on the voice recording part. I'm thinking the prompts could be set up sort of like this: https://ibb.co/f9WHzYC

And then every morning, you could get a notification to listen to a random selection of previous recordings.

[eigengrau5150]

I've been getting good results with a $20 fountain pen (Pilot Metropolitan, medium nib) and a stack of cheap marble notebooks from Costco despite being left-handed and having not done any serious longhand since college. It beats talking to my cat when I need to rubber duck my way to a bug fix. I'm not sure using more software would be an improvement for me, but good luck.

[Leftium]

There's a method of (UX) research that samples user feedback at regular intervals. I forgot the exact term, but usually the users are responsible for recording at regular intervals.

Also I recall someone kept a simple journal where they wrote down where they were, who they were with, and what they were doing at the same time every day (like 7pm).

Both of the above use cases could be done with a daily alarm on your phone, but your tool would streamline the process.

[mfiggy]

Thanks for sharing. Do you do anything like this? I'm intending to make the app customizable so you could set it up for any use case, like this: https://ibb.co/PNCtpyL

[Leftium]

I studied UX in university, but I haven't done any ESM myself. (Just remembered the term is Experience Sampling Method[1])

Also called "pager study" because pagers were used to prompt the users to make a diary entry.

[1]: https://uxpamagazine.org/mobile_technology_experience_sampli...

[codezero]

I find this interesting, and I expect the primary focus of HN members will be privacy and control of answers and responses.