Sides
Sides was born one fateful evening when I watched a friend struggle to rehearse her lines in another app. I thought, “I could make something better.” So I did. Sides is a rehearsal app for actors that lets them import or create scripts, then run lines against generated voices or their own recordings. Line rehearsal apps aren’t new, but existing options turn simple tasks like building a scene or recording cues into tedious, repetitive processes. I designed Sides to get as much of that setup out of the way as possible, so actors can spend less time preparing and more time rehearsing. Everything runs entirely on-device, keeping copyrighted scripts off external servers and allowing actors to rehearse anywhere, even without an internet connection.
Team
Me
Focus
Product &
Interaction design
Duration
3 Months
Year
2026
The opportunity
Every minute spent building a scene is a minute not spent rehearsing.
Before an actor can rehearse a scene, they have to prepare it. In every rehearsal app I could find, this means repeating the same sequence for every single line: add a cue, choose a speaker, record the line, save, repeat. The longer the scene, the more time spent operating the app instead of rehearsing. I wanted to see how much of that time I could eliminate.
Scene building
Alongside PDF import, Sides allows you to create a scene with your voice using one simple action: hold to record, say who’s speaking, perform the line, and release. The line is created, its speaker assigned, and its text transcribed automatically for quick editing or reading through later. You can build an entire scene while reading straight down the script, without ever losing your place.
Design exploration
How do you give a script personality without pictures?
The script library screen was the first screen I designed, and one I struggled with for a long time. I wanted script cards to have personality, but wasn’t sure how to create that without relying on imagery. Earlier explorations used fanned thumbnails of imported PDFs, but script pages rarely looked good enough to carry the design. Eventually, I realized that color and typography alone could create the visual interest and at-a-glance recognizability that I was looking for. The new cards completely changed how the app felt to me. I started genuinely looking forward to opening Sides, even while testing it, because I loved seeing the library.
Earlier exploration
Current direction
App design
Personality shouldn’t become another setup step.
New scripts automatically receive a random color and typeface, so even actors who never customize a thing still get a library that feels colorful and distinct. Customization is intentionally kept out of the script creation flow, tying back to Sides’ core promise: getting actors from setup to rehearsal as fast as possible. Actors can still customize each card if they like, but it’s never required before they start rehearsing.
Rehearsal
A rehearsal should be readable at a glance.
Your lines sit on the right, everyone else’s on the left, and each character’s accent color appears beside their name and subtly fills the background while they’re speaking. At the bottom, the cue rail gives you a quick overview of the scene. Each tick represents someone’s line, with your own cues highlighted in your accent color, making it easy to scrub through the rehearsal and find your place.
Rehearsal
How do you make rehearsing alone feel like a conversation?
When you’re ready to rehearse from memory, switching to Off Book mode makes the script disappear and transforms each character’s colored dot into a little orb that acts as your scene partner. Orbs were designed with just enough personality to feel alive without becoming distracting: active speakers look toward whoever they’re speaking to, background characters exchange glances, and up to two speakers can share the foreground during back-and-forth dialogue.
Rehearsal backend
What happens when the cast outgrows the screen?
The answer to this question felt ridiculously obvious once I found it: give them a backstage. Characters who haven’t spoken recently and aren’t about to speak move backstage on a circular rail, which rotates in either direction to bring speakers onstage as others leave. This keeps entrances and exits predictable and unobtrusive, and prevents characters from jumping across the screen. Backstage, characters can move on and off the rail as needed, ensuring that anyone about to speak is already in position to move naturally from the background to the foreground rather than appearing from offscreen.
Your scene partner
Who reads the other lines?
When preparing a rehearsal, actors can use either their own recorded performances or voices generated by a small on-device text-to-speech model. The Voice Engine includes ten voices that can be assigned to individual characters. Both options live alongside character and scene selection in the rehearsal preparation screen.
Generated voices
Sometimes the built-in option isn’t the simplest.
When I first added the Voice Engine, I planned to use Apple’s built-in text-to-speech voices. But getting the best voices required actors to dig through iOS Settings and manually download them from a list of dozens, which conflicted with Sides’ goal of getting from download to rehearsal as quickly as possible. I ended up auditioning several open-source text-to-speech models before choosing Kyutai Pocket TTS for its range of voices and natural, expressive speech.
“Your coat, sir. And if I may—do try to make it home this time.”
Loading
The show goes on, even while you wait.
Keeping Sides entirely on-device means actors sometimes have to wait while the app does heavier work, like voice generation or rehearsal analysis. But loading screens don’t have to be boring. I wanted each one to show what the app is working on, while also giving actors something fun to do. During voice generation, the character orbs hold a “Sound Check,” stepping forward to practice their lines. After a rehearsal, the waveform from rehearsal transforms into an orb of sound that joins others being inspected by the familiar spotlight. Every loading screen is also fully interactive. Actors can tap the orbs during sound checks, make a mess of paper stacks during PDF import, and discover all kinds of little Easter eggs while the app works.
Reflection
