CoPracTter: Toward Integrating Personalized Practice Scenarios, Timely Feedback and Social Support into An Online Support Tool for Coping with Stutering in China

Stuttering is a speech disorder infuencing over 70 million people worldwide, including 13 million in China. It causes low self-esteem among other detrimental efects on people who stutter (PwS). Although prior work has explored approaches to assist PwS, they primarily focused on western contexts. In our formative study, we found unique practices and challenges among Chinese PwS. We then iteratively designed an online tool, CoPracTter, to support Chinese PwS practicing speaking fuency with 1) targeted stress-inducing practice scenarios, 2) real-time speech indicators, and 3) personalized timely feedback from the community. We further conducted a seven-day deployment study (N=11) to understand how participants utilized these key features. To our knowledge, it is the frst time such a prototype was designed and tested for a long time with multiple PwS participants online simultaneously. Results indicate that personalized practice with targeted scenarios and timely feedback from a supportive community assisted PwS in speaking fuently, staying positive, and facing similar real-life circumstances.