Harbour

A private rehearsal room for real conversation

Some conversations feel like open water.

Harbour lets you practice them out loud with a conversation partner. Then it shows you, with evidence from your own words and voice, how you actually showed up.

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“The feedback was very accurate — and you can redo the skill as many times as you need.”
Educator specialised in autistic people · early tester

Supported by the University of Fribourg and Fri-Up · Built in Switzerland

Some conversations ask a lot of us.

The interview on Thursday. The call you keep putting off. The “can we talk?” that has been on your mind all week. If you replay conversations in your head and still come away unsure how they went, you are not alone.

Practice shouldn’t cost more than the real thing.

Harbour is a rehearsal room, not a stage: private, patient, and free of judgment, with no audience and no score to perform for.

How it works

No scheduling, no waiting, no pressure. Practice when it suits you — whether that is 3 PM or 3 AM. Harbour is always available, always patient, and always judgment-free.

  1. Choose

    Select in the menu the situation that fits what you want to improve: job interviews, difficult discussions, everyday interactions.

  2. Practise: speak, don’t talk

    A virtual conversation partner talks with you, adjusting to the situation you have chosen. Your conversation, short and realistic, feels like you were on the phone.

  3. Learn

    After each session, you receive clear and objective feedback based on scientific markers of effective communication. You also get practical suggestions you can use straight away.

  4. Improve

    Repeat to train further. Track your progress over time. See what changes. Build confidence session after session.

Artificial intelligence is used for the conversation partner voices, for transcribing the conversations, for spotting in each conversation the markers of a defined, scenario-specific analysis grid, and for the written synthesis of the results. The analysis grid and algorithms do not rely on artificial intelligence and are proprietary to Project Harbour.

Feedback backed by evidence.

No unexplained numbers. Every observation points at a moment you can recognize: a sentence you said, a pause you took, a question you asked.

Unlike communication tools that give generic feedback you cannot check, Harbour reads your conversation against a science-based analysis grid — not a general AI “judgement”.

Scenario: declining a deadline · reconstructed example

Alex (AI partner)

Any chance you could take the Meridian file this week? I’m underwater.

You

I hear that the deadline’s heavy — and I can’t take it on this week. Could we look at Monday together?

Acknowledged first

“I hear that the deadline’s heavy” · 0:39 · you met them before you said no.

Clear refusal

“I can’t take it on this week” · 0:42 · no hedge, no false maybe.

Unhurried delivery

Steady pace and two deliberate pauses, with no rush to fill the silence.

A reconstructed example. Your report is built from your own session, with the same evidence-first structure across your words, your voice, and how the conversation moved.

A real Harbour session report: an overall score of 72%, a Be clear score of 80% broken down by intention, and tiles for Be clear, Build relationship, and Show confidence.
A real session report: your score on each skill, and the moments behind it.
The Harbour progress tracker: rising lines for Be clear, Build relationship, and Show confidence across recent sessions, each marked Strong or On track.
And how those skills move across every session you practise.

A peek at some scenarios you can practise with Harbour.

A growing library across social, professional, and health conversations. Pick the one you need.

Collage: a phone in front of a lighthouse with golden stairs.

The phone call

For when ringing someone feels enormous.

Collage: mooring knots in etched rope before a lighthouse.

The job interview

Hold your story steady under questions.

Collage: a rope barrier and a numbered channel buoy at a pier.

Saying no

Set a boundary and keep the relationship.

Collage: an etched ear over a sailboat and a sweeping lighthouse beam.

Listening deeply

Let someone feel genuinely heard.

Collage: a compass resting on a dotted route toward a lighthouse.

The sales call

Lead with skilful questions.

Collage: sailboats crossing between torn-paper waves toward a lighthouse.

The party

Small talk without the script.

Every scenario is localized in English, French, and German, with personas that stay in character and analysis tuned to what the scenario is really asking of you.

Meet the team

Supported and hosted by the University of Fribourg, Human-IST Department.

Portrait of Marie-Liesse Le Corfec

Marie-Liesse Le Corfec

Chief Executive Officer & co-founder

Structures the project and turns the innovation into a product people want to use.

LinkedIn →
Portrait of Dr Samy Rima

Dr Samy Rima

Chief Technology Officer & co-founder

Leads the scientific work and development of the tool.

LinkedIn →

Expert advisers

Luciana Collomb (ASD special-needs educator), Dr Stephanie Durrleman (psycholinguist), Mathilde Gardin (psychotherapist), Fabrice Hiltbrunner (executive coach), Anne-Laure Musial (recruiter), Dr Olivier Simon (neurologist and physiatrist).

Art: Joel Ferrari, Aenigma. Development testing with Rafisa Informatik GmbH.

Contact

Questions, ideas, feedback? We would love to hear from you — hello@project-harbour.ch

The next one doesn’t have to feel like open water.

Join the alpha: practice a real scenario, see your first mirror, and carry what you notice into the conversation that matters.