in progressEducation · youth development2025-26

Project Alpha

A pocket coach that gives teenagers somewhere to practise speaking up. And the system that shows parents it's working.

sector
Education, youth development
scope
Student app + trainer platform + measurement
for
Students, trainers, observers, parents
status
In progress
  • product design
  • mobile app
  • web app
  • backend + data
  • speech AI
  • computer vision
Project Alpha · TTT · practice
All situations
FE17 · Facilitation & Engagement

Halfway through the session, the entire room is losing energy

Run 1 complete
What you said

Against what this situation asks for

90overall
Recognised the change in the room80

You acknowledged the energy drop by saying, ‘I can see it, we have been sitting for almost an hour, and that is on me.’ This shows you noticed the room’s fatigue, which is key for effective engagement.

Deliberately shifted activity, pace, questioning or delivery90

Your approach to change the pace was strong, suggesting, ‘everybody stand up, stretch your arms up high.’ This deliberate shift engages learners and reinvigorates the room’s energy.

Next time
Incorporate a quick interactive activity earlier in the session to maintain energy levels.
How it sounded
100pace / 100
94pauses / 100
183words / min
0long pauses
How you carried it

Nothing stood out — how you carried it matched what you were doing.

Full body report
Now the expected response

Recognise the change and deliberately shift activity, pace, questioning or delivery to re-engage students.

The body this asks forAppropriate increase in energy and purposeful movement.
Watch out forBlaming students; continuing unchanged; simply speaking louder.
The run

Speak it to the room, camera on

standing · 0:44
A trainer explaining with both hands, seen through the practice camera
camera on · not recordedreading head · shoulders · hands · hipsin frame
PauseStop0:44 / 2:00
Project Alpha student app, Journal screen

the brief

Confidence is a skill. Nobody teaches it.

Teenagers are told to speak up, stand straight and say what they mean. Almost nobody gives them a place to practise. Classrooms cover the syllabus. The skills that decide how a young person walks into a room are left to chance.

Project Alpha gives them that place: a programme run by trained coaches, and an app in every student's pocket. The brief had two hard edges. The users are minors, so nothing is kept that doesn't need to be. And the programme has to prove it works to parents, without turning a teenager's growth into a leaderboard.

The moment it feels like a test, a teenager stops practising.

01A daily habit

One minute a day. Not another subject.

The app runs on a small daily ritual. A mood check-in that answers back, then a Spark: a sixty-second lesson on something real, like saying no or owning a mistake. Each lesson ends with a habit the student can drop into their planner in one tap. The streak only grows by checking in, so it rewards showing up, not grinding.

  • ↳Sparks across emotions, communication, leadership and digital balance
  • ↳A journal you can type, speak, or talk through with an AI
  • ↳A planner assistant that asks before it adds anything
  • ↳Points that can't be farmed: delete the task, lose the XP
Daily mood check-in
Sparks trail for the Emotions module
Six moods, one tapmood check-in

The one daily ritual, and the only thing that keeps the streak alive.

Sixty-second sparksself-paced

The next lesson unlocks instantly. Quizzes are a bonus, never a gate.

Spark → habit → plannerone tap

Every lesson ends with a habit that drops straight into the planner.

02The coach

A coach that quotes you back.

Students pick a scenario, from introducing themselves to telling a friend they crossed a line. They prepare, record, and get coaching on what they actually said. Every note has to quote the student's own words, and the coach can only judge against that scenario's criteria. If a recording suggests the student is struggling with something bigger, scoring stops and the app shows real people to talk to instead.

  • ↳30 scenarios, from safe openers to hard conversations
  • ↳Speech transcribed with word-level timing
  • ↳A safety check runs before anything is scored
  • ↳Audio deleted the moment scoring is done
Coaching feedback for 'Apologize for a mistake'
Safety path: real helplines instead of a score
Quotes you backthe rubric

Every note cites the student's own words, scored only on the scenario.

+20 XP, onceidempotent

Points land once per attempt. A retry never double-counts.

If it gets heavybefore scoring

A safety check runs first and shows real helplines.

03Body language

Reads how you stand. Keeps nothing.

Prop the phone up and practise. The camera reads posture, gestures, sway and stillness on the device, then lines that timeline up against the words. That's how it can tell a freeze, where you lost your place, from a hold, where you let a line land. The posture check works the same way: one photo, analysed and deleted, then a figure posed from your own angles and a few things to try.

  • ↳Reads body language in the context of each scenario
  • ↳No video recorded, and no body data leaves the phone
  • ↳Your reading is yours alone, never compared with other students
  • ↳The photo is deleted in front of you
Presence Lab introduction
Presence reading, posed from measured angles
One photo, then gonesame request

Analysed and deleted in one request. Never saved, never shown back.

Posed from your angleswhat's kept

Head, shoulder and spine angles are all the app keeps.

Plain words, no verdictstested

No clinical words, no rankings. A unit test bans "slouch".

04Proof

Proof, from the people in the room.

Parents and funders want to know whether students are actually changing. So growth is measured through four instruments: trainers rating sessions, a skills rubric per module, parents answering from home, and students reflecting on themselves. App usage is kept out on purpose. Otherwise the report would measure time in the app and call it growth.

  • ↳Observers and lead trainers rate sessions on the web
  • ↳Parents answer from an emailed link, no account needed
  • ↳A reliability check before any score is published
  • ↳One report, written four ways: student, parent, team, funder
Project Alpha · TTT · trainer dashboard
Priya NairTrainer
PN
Status
75%
18
Lessons
of 24 completed
70%
07
Quizzes
of 10 passed
My courses
All CoursesCommunication SkillsLeadership & Management
1/3
Questions that open a room

How to ask so thirty students think, not just the three who always answer.

60% done2 weeks
Continue Learning
1Why the first five minutes decide the roomCOMPLETED
2Open questions vs. quiz questionsCOMPLETED
3Wait time: the three-second ruleCOMPLETED
4When a wrong answer is an interesting onePENDING
5Cold-calling without the fearPENDING
2/3
Holding the room

Energy, pacing and what to do when attention drops halfway through.

25% done2 weeks
Continue Learning
Project Alpha student app, Today screen

under the hood

how it's built.

The parts nobody sees, and the reason the parts everybody sees keep working.

  1. 01

    One backend, every audience

    Students, trainers, parents and admins work from the same data, with typed contracts to every app

  2. 02

    Nothing kept that doesn't need to be

    Audio deleted after scoring, photos the moment they're read, no video ever recorded

  3. 03

    Scores you can check by hand

    Rounding and bands anyone can reproduce on paper; raters who disagree get flagged, not averaged

  4. 04

    Rules that fail the build

    Banned words and design rules are enforced by automated tests, so they can't creep back

  5. 05

    Built for Indian phones and networks

    Retries that never double-count; speech scoring that doesn't penalise accents or cheap microphones

  6. 06

    Ready to sell from day one

    Free and premium access decided on the server, wherever a family pays

in progress

What's shipping next

We're building Project Alpha alongside the trainers and families who use it. Every feature starts as a written spec and ships once it's been tested on real devices.

  • 01Sign in with Google and Apple
  • 02Body tracking validated on real phones, in real classrooms
  • 03Speaking levels calibrated against human raters
  • 04In-app check-ins and assessments for every module

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