In development · iOS, then Android
Her Next Move
You get one first conversation with somebody, and you get it once. Have it here first, out loud, while nothing is at stake.
What happens in five minutes
- 01
You pick who, and where
Several characters, each with a temperament of her own. A café, a bar, a queue, a gym. The place decides how much room you get.
- 02
You speak first
She does not know this is practice. There is no script and no menu of replies. You say something out loud and it lands or it does not.
- 03
She answers in real time
A live voice. She hesitates, she laughs, she goes quiet on purpose. What moves her is what you said, not how long you spoke.
- 04
The bar tells you the truth
Above her, a thin line for what she actually feels. People are polite in person, and the line is not.
- 05
The debrief
Five counts, not a grade, and one of four coaches naming the exact turn where it was decided. Each coach has real flaws, because a coach who agrees with everything teaches nothing.
The line under her is the whole point
It reads if she stays, and it moves with what she is actually feeling rather than with what she is showing you. That gap is the reason the app exists. People approaching somebody overestimate how badly a refusal will go and read ordinary politeness as interest, so the one thing practice cannot give you in the real world is an honest reading of how it is going.
Here it is on screen while you are still talking, and afterwards a coach points at the turn where it moved.
What it refuses to do
The parts that are missing are missing on purpose. They are most of the design.
- A camera
There isn’t one, and there never will be. The app does not film, does not photograph, and never asks for the permission. The only sensor is your voice.
- Stored audio
Raw audio is never kept. What survives a session is a transcript and a handful of counts, and deleting your account deletes those too.
- A talking avatar
A still portrait and a live voice, not a puppet moving its mouth. The generated video was built, tried, and cut, because it cost more and added less.
- Streaks and confetti
No XP, no badges, no numbers counting up. A celebration after a mediocre conversation is a lie, and the app promised not to lie.
Why practice works
Rehearsing a hard social situation is one of the better-evidenced ideas in clinical psychology. In meta-analysis, virtual-reality exposure therapy for social anxiety performs about as well as doing the thing for real, and clearly better than not practising at all.
That is the ground the app stands on. It is not a claim about this app: there is no outcome data for Her Next Move, and there will not be any until real people have used it long enough for it to mean something. It is the reason the premise is not a trick.
Ask to be told when it ships
One address, answered by the people building it. No form, no scheduling link, and no list you have to leave later.
geral@brunescco.comClick the address to copy it, or open it in your mail app.
In development · No date, because there isn’t one