UX/UI Case Study • Desktop Utility

AI TTS

AI TTS Header

1. CONTEXT

AI TTS is an offline, privacy-first text-to-speech Windows application designed for absolute simplicity. It allows users to paste up to 2,000 characters, generate natural-sounding voiceovers using bundled AI models, preview the result, and export to WAV—all locally, without accounts, subscriptions, or cloud uploads.

2. THE PROBLEM

  • 1
    Managing Multi-Clip Sessions Without Clutter

    Users often generate multiple audio clips in a single session. To save screen real estate and avoid a cluttered vertical list of files, I used a paginated history (e.g., "1/3") under the preview area.

  • 2
    The Friction of Recall

    While pagination solved visual clutter, navigating back and forth introduced a severe usability issue: users had to press play on each historical clip just to remember what audio it contained, creating a tedious "guess and check" loop.

3. THE SOLUTION

  • 1
    Contextual Text Previews

    I introduced a synchronized "Preview Text" element directly within the playback section. As users paginate through their generated clips, the interface instantly displays the exact text input that was used to generate that specific audio file.

  • 2
    Immediate Context

    This solution maintained the minimalist visual layout while entirely eliminating the need to scrub or play audio for identification, drastically speeding up the export workflow.

Contextual Text Previews

4. DESIGN THINKING

  • Proactive Problem Solving

    By mapping the core user flow, I recognized that bulk-generation would quickly turn a minimalist UI into a frustrating memory game. I solved for clip identification before it scaled into a usability nightmare.

  • UX Principles Applied

    • Recognition over Recall: Users can instantly recognize the text rather than having to remember or guess the audio content.
    • Progressive Disclosure: Keeping the main UI uncluttered by hiding older clips in a paginated state, but revealing the critical identifier (the text) exactly when needed.

  • Next Steps

    If resources allowed, I would track the "time-to-export" metric to measure if this textual preview meaningfully reduced the average time spent navigating history before finalizing an export.