Novel technology to beat stage fright

Manama : A group of youngsters believes they have found a novel technology to help people over come the fear of public speaking.

Ali Inayat, Malik Jehangir Riaz and Muhammad Hamza Zubair developed a virtual reality based smart phone application with the help of their mentor Diane Prieur and they are confident their innovation can help people overcome the fear of public speaking. The smart phone application named ‘Glare’ works in synergy with a virtual reality device. 

Explaining how it works one of the members of team, Malik Jahangir Riaz told DT News, “The user will connect his mobile to the virtual reality box and will see an audience in a 360 degree angle.” 

The team had won first place in the Microsoft’s Imagine Cup competition last April. They represented Bahrain at regional level of the Microsoft competition. Although they did not return victorious from Lebanon, they now hope to succeed by converting the project into a venture. Jahangir explained to DT News the concept behind Glare. Excerpts:

On coming up with the idea

Riaz: GLARE is a framework of application, dedicated to help people in overcoming the fear of public speaking. This framework consists of an experience module and an artificially intelligent readiness module. While studying at the University of Bahrain, we saw many students, who used to avoid activities as well as courses which had presentations necessary as part of the final grade. Many people used to, hesitate and used to panic on stage, forget their lines and even hyperventilate. The existing solutions weren’t quiet affordable, we decided to come up with a unique solution, that does not only shine as an innovation but also, it can be affordable to almost everyone. Our mission is to see the people, take a stand against their fears, immerse themselves deeply into overcoming it, and speak confidently.

How the app eliminate fear of public speaking?

Riaz: It uses the power of Microsoft Azure cloud and its features, which are used in its modules. The experience and the readiness module. We tried our best to create a solution which not only simulates the real environment of an audience, stage and much more as part of the experience module, but also it can help users to plan, and edit their speech content through the power of machine learning as part of the readiness module.

Plans to further develop the app

Riaz: The good news is that we have started turning the idea into a venture. The experience module is now available on google play store under the name GLARE Mobile VR. It works if the user’s mobile phone has a gyroscope sensor. Currently, all our social media channels (@glarebh) are active and we are welcoming feedback from the users all across the globe. The readiness module will be available at the end of this year. We will be expanding our team within the beginning of the next year if things go as expected.

On competing at the Imagine Cup

Riaz: GLARE raising the Bahrain flag at the Microsoft Imagine Cup Semi Finals 2017 held at the American University in Beirut, Lebanon, helped us in letting people of different Middle East and African countries, know more about GLARE. The best part was the exposure that our project got via judging rounds. And the biggest achievement was, GLARE received the PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARD, where it received the maximum votes from all the teams from various Middle East and African countries, for being the best solution to a huge problem. It was quite surprising that some teams requested to use our project so that they could prepare their own presentation skills for their own projects throughout the competition.