Alright, let me tell you about this little experiment I did with “alumni pronounce.” So, the idea popped into my head – how cool would it be to have a way for our alumni to easily record and share the correct pronunciation of their names?
First things first, I started poking around for some simple recording tools. Didn’t want anything too fancy, just something that could capture audio cleanly and let users upload it without a fuss. Found a few open-source options and settled on one that seemed straightforward enough to embed on a webpage.
Next up, I needed a place to store these audio files. Figured cloud storage would be the easiest, so I spun up a little bucket on one of the major cloud providers. Nothing crazy, just enough space to hold a bunch of short audio clips.
Now came the fun part – building the actual interface. I whipped up a quick webpage with a form where alumni could enter their name, record their pronunciation, and upload the file. Kept it super simple, focusing on usability. Used a bit of JavaScript to handle the recording and file uploading process.
To make things searchable, I added a backend script that would take the uploaded audio file and the entered name, then create a searchable database entry. This way, when someone typed in a name, they could quickly find and play the corresponding pronunciation.
For testing, I roped in a few of my colleagues and some friendly alumni volunteers. They gave me some great feedback on the user experience, which helped me iron out a few rough edges. Things like clarifying the instructions and optimizing the audio recording quality.
After a few rounds of testing and tweaks, I finally had a working prototype. It wasn’t perfect, but it did the job – allowing alumni to record and share their name pronunciations in a simple, accessible way.
The final step was deploying it on a subdomain of our alumni website. I made sure to set up proper security measures and monitoring to keep things running smoothly.
Challenges I faced:
- Getting the audio recording to work consistently across different browsers.
- Handling large numbers of uploads without slowing down the system.
- Ensuring the database search was fast and accurate.
What I learned:
- Simplicity is key when designing user interfaces.
- Thorough testing is crucial for catching unexpected issues.
- There’s always room for improvement, even after deployment.
Overall, it was a fun and educational project. It’s not going to win any awards, but it solves a real problem and makes it easier for people to pronounce names correctly. And that’s what matters, right?
