Project Work Best in Category 4 (Resource Development): Speak to Lead

Written by: Teo Jia Hao Jason, Ethan Tan Jian-Yi, Zhu Tianyou Jordan (2O2, 2026)

When we first started our Project Work journey, our goal was to help students become more confident in public speaking. We knew that many students struggled with stage fright and delivering speeches, so we created Speak to Lead, a platform where students could learn useful techniques, practise their speeches and develop their speaking skills.

However, as we began turning our ideas into an actual resource, we quickly realised that the process would not be as straightforward as we had expected.

One of our biggest challenges was developing SpeakScore AI, our AI-powered speech feedback tool, using Base44. Since we had little experience with AI development, we encountered quite a few problems along the way. At times, the tool did not work as we intended, so we had to keep experimenting, troubleshooting and making adjustments.

We also wanted the feedback to be genuinely useful to students, rather than simply giving them information they would not know how to act on. This meant spending time refining the tool so that its feedback would be clearer, more specific and easier to apply. Although the process could be frustrating, it taught us to be patient and persistent when things did not go according to plan.

Another important part of our project was researching public speaking techniques. We explored different resources and considered which strategies would be the most practical and relevant for students. We wanted our website to provide advice that students could actually use when preparing for and delivering their speeches.

Through this process, we learnt to evaluate information more critically instead of simply accepting everything we found. We had to consider whether the advice suited our target audience and how it could genuinely help students improve.

Pilot testing was another important stage in our journey. By inviting participants to try our resources and share their feedback, we gained a better understanding of what worked well and what still needed improvement.

This showed us that even if we believed we had created something useful, we could not be certain until our target audience had actually tried it. Their feedback reminded us of the importance of testing our ideas, listening to users and being willing to make changes.

Looking back, Speak to Lead taught us far more than we had expected. We learnt how to research more carefully, respond to unexpected problems and improve our ideas based on feedback.

Most importantly, we realised that a good project does not have to be perfect from the start. What matters is being willing to learn from mistakes, make improvements and keep refining an idea until it becomes genuinely useful to the people it was created for.