--- title: Good UX takes using the app date: 2026-08-01T11:57:00-04:00 author: John Morton canonical_url: "https://supergeekery.com/blog/good-ux-takes-using-the-app" section: Blog --- # Good UX takes using the app *August 1, 2026* by John Morton *Audio narration available for this post.* This morning I made a great advance in the user experience on Alias TTS. I've been working on this app for about six weeks and every day I have another little insight on how to make it better. My self-imposed deadline for a V1 is basically now, or actually tomorrow, because this app is being submitted for a hackathon, which is due on Monday, August 3rd. But every time I think it's done and ready for the judges’ review, I have another insight. That insight is built out of my actual use of the app. I think having built a lot of web apps definitely helps with creating a usable web app experience, but there's no substitute for getting in and actually using the app. (This is often called "dogfooding" your app.) I want to describe today's UX update for you as an example of what makes me so happy with this app. I think the easiest way for you to experience it is to look at the video I've added to this post. Let me describe what's going on. The article you're seeing is made up of 147 separate small chunks of audio that are stitched together. And the user of the app, in this case that would be me, will review the final product by playing the concatenated version of the audio at the top of the screen. The UX update I've made today ties the scroll position with the point in the audio playback that is going on in the playback area that is pinned to the top of the screen. I find this incredibly helpful for very long pieces of audio because otherwise you don't know which chunk to make a correction in as you're listening to the fully concatenated piece of audio. The other added bonus for this ability to tie together the scroll position with the point in the audio playback is that it also works now in reverse. That is a small play button next to the chunk number. You can find any individual chunk on the page and then press this small play button at the top and it will jump the playhead in the concatenated audio to the correct point. It's just a nice UX and now that I see it in action, I can't believe it took me this long to think of it. But that's why you have to use your app to understand how it actually functions. --- **Tags:** ux ## Related Posts - [Alias TTS: the audio was never the hard part](https://supergeekery.com/blog/alias-tts-the-audio-was-never-the-hard-part) - [Bespoken 5.3.0: Long-Form Audio, Credit Tracking, and Multisite Support](https://supergeekery.com/blog/bespoken-530-long-form-audio-credit-tracking-and-multisite-support)