Spellbound

The idea

A spelling-practice app for kids that uses voice as the primary input. Instead of tapping out a word, you say it out loud — Spellbound listens, checks the spelling, and gives feedback. The goal was to bridge the gap between “drill” apps that feel like homework and the kind of playful, conversational learning experience kids actually enjoy.

What I did

This was a team project for Stanford’s intro HCI course (CS 147). My contributions:

• User research — interviews with elementary school teachers and parents to identify pain points in current spelling tools.
• Iterative prototyping — paper prototypes → low-fi wireframes → high-fi mockups → working web prototype.
• Web development — built the prototype that we used in user testing sessions and demoed at the Expo.

Outcome

Spellbound was selected by judges for two awards at the 2018 Stanford HCI Expo:

• Best Concept — out of 40+ teams
• Best Overall App — out of 40+ teams

The course was design-focused, so a working prototype wasn’t required — but having one made user testing and the final demo significantly stronger.

Takeaways

This is the project that pulled me toward front-end and HCI work. Watching real kids interact with something we’d built — and seeing where they got stuck — was a different kind of feedback loop than I’d had in any other CS class. It directly shaped my concentration choice (Human-Computer Interaction) and the kinds of engineering roles I went after.