Interview Moderator Timer

Desktop-first web app for moderators to design user interview studies, manage participants, and run timed slide-based sessions.

Hosted app: user-interview-moderator-timer.vercel.app

Stack

• Next.js (App Router) + React + TypeScript
• Tailwind CSS + shadcn/ui
• Neon Postgres + Drizzle ORM
• Better Auth (email + password, hashed in your database)

Use the hosted app

1. Open the Vercel URL
2. Create an account with email and password
3. Your studies stay private to that account

Fork and run your own

1. Fork this repository
2. Create a Neon project and copy the connection string
3. Clone your fork, then:

npm install
cp .env.example .env.local

4. Fill in .env.local:

DATABASE_URL=postgresql://...
BETTER_AUTH_SECRET=generate-a-long-random-string
BETTER_AUTH_URL=http://localhost:3000

Generate a secret with:

node -e "console.log(require('crypto').randomBytes(32).toString('hex'))"

5. Apply the schema to Neon:

psql "$DATABASE_URL" -f drizzle/init.sql

6. npm run dev and open http://localhost:3000

Deploy to Vercel

1. Import the forked GitHub repo in Vercel
2. Set environment variables: DATABASE_URL, BETTER_AUTH_SECRET, BETTER_AUTH_URL (your production URL, e.g. https://your-app.vercel.app)
3. Deploy

Flow

1. Sign in / create account
2. Studies — create and open studies
3. Study builder — client/study name, session duration, context + warm-up guides, nested sections and questions (sections can be collapsed while editing)
4. Study detail — add participants; start a session for a specific person
5. Live session — overall timer + per-section timer, check off questions as you cover them
6. Session summary — saved notes, responses, and coverage