Background

The Genesis

I, Gary Copeland, had worked on a game app with Jeff Hester (of Five Fans Productions). His eight-year-old son wasn’t saying his Rs well, and I had spent a few minutes with him which made me realize he could say R correctly sometimes.

The Idea My work with Jeff made me think we could have the computer analyze a person's speech and give kid-friendly feedback in a game-style setting faster, more accurately, and more consistently than a human teacher ever could. We could thus meld the programmer’s world with the therapist’s world. I searched for existing technologies, but nothing did what I wanted it to do. (We later discovered that my idea had actually been carried out once in 2013 on a limited scale, but not for the use I had in mind.) I discussed my idea with my immediate family during a vacation to North Carolina in May 2015. My oldest son, Benjamin, a biomedical engineering student at UAB at that time, surprisingly said, “I think I kind of know what that program would look like”!

The Team

After deciding against trying to have my idea developed as part of Benjamin's senior design class, he and I mapped out ideas for the app that fall. In December 2015, I confirmed the music would be done by Greg Conway of Sonic Alchemy, and then I made a trip to Costa Rica where I renewed a long-idle relationship with a dear friend, Marvin Soto. He had become a graphics designer in the intervening years, and his nephew, Josué Soto, already had eight years' experience as a programmer. By February 2016, they had both agreed to be part of the development team.

The Development

Over the next two years, we each worked on our parts of the app. It made it to the App Store in February 2018,
and my wife and I debuted it at the annual convention of speech-language pathologists and audiologists in Birmingham, Alabama,
then in Atlanta, Georgia.

I realized that the speech analysis of the app was a weakness, and the feedback we received at the conventions made me want to restructure the app. Josué and Marvin had made their contributions, and moonlighting programmers are hard to find, so the app languished and came off the app store. {:-\

In late 2023, Benjamin had to step back from the app, so, in 2024, I took over the programming and made progress with the restructuring.

At the end of the year, a nephew, Alex Dvorak (brainiac Benjamin's brainiac cousin!), agreed to help develop a specific, crucial component of the programming, the "Spartan". By the end of 2025, two huge changes occurred: Benjamin resumed work on the app (yay!), and Alex completed the SpartanV1 (double-yay!).

As of May 2026, the app is being restructured (again) to accommodate the SpartanV1 and is being translated into a different programming language. Because of the nature of the SpartanV1, the "woRds" activity will go on the shelf for now, but the "RRRRR!" activity will come to life. We anticipate the app being more directly useful during therapy session, while still being appropriate for home practice.

Stay tuned!