ELIA Life Technology Summary for 2018 - 2019

(A PDF version of this summary can be found here. It includes a table of contents.)

Summary Review

It has been a momentous time for ELIA Life Technology, PBC. Over the past year and a half (since our last formal update) we began selling products and promoting the ELIA Frames™ font. Our community grew. Our focus changed from making progress to making a movement - a movement where the community would help carry the ELIA Frames font to the people who need it. We also greatly expanded our capabilities through partnerships with leading companies. Their expertise is in disciplines where the work is essential to what we do, but not a core expertise that defines what we do (e.g. ink jet printing technology development).

Progress Made

Since the beginning of 2018, we completed a successful exhibit at the Smithsonian’s Cooper Hewitt Design Museum (from April to October), successfully executed a worldwide Kickstarter crowdsourcing campaign, continued development of the TouchPrinter, raised capital, redesigned 15 characters in the font and conducted pilot programs. Our team has grown to include new talent and new corporate partners with Simplexity Product Development (inkjet printing engineering expertise), Daly PR (PR, marketing and strategic partnerships), Christian Morkza (video content), Playmatics (game development and learning research), MGI USA (industrial printers). Also, informed by reader feedback, we conducted a significant redesign of several characters in the ELIA Frames Font. It is now even easier to learn and read than ever. Lastly, throughout the year, the company has attracted press coverage from news outlets that serve millions of readers.

As a company, we are a different, better company than we were at the beginning of 2018. We believe we are on the road to doing great things. And we look forward to sharing the journey with you.

Where we began 2018

At the beginning of 2018, we had designed and tested the ELIA Frames™ Font (ELIA Frames), and we had designed a handful of products that we believed would be help our community, and be demanded by them, if the products were available. But our beliefs were untested hypotheses. Fortunately, ELIA Frames had garnered attention in the press and design community. And we had been invited to participate in a national exhibit at the Smithsonian’s Cooper Hewitt Design Museum. We felt the time had come for a Kickstarter that would help us test our hypotheses, and educate and grow our community. It was the perfect way to start a movement around ELIA Frames. It was also a good way to build relationships within the blind community, so that when our TouchPrinter is available, we can introduce it efficiently to a community that is already familiar with our work.

Below you will find two ways to understand our 2018-2019 progress. The first is a subject by subject review. We have also included a chronological review of events. If you would like continued updates, you can subscribe to our weekly newsletter, which can be found at http://www.theeliaidea.com/newsletter. The newsletter will return next week. Andrew suspended it due to family matters in late January.

The Loss of Dr. Andrea Li (1968 – 2019)

Andrea Li, Ph.D. was a research advisor and collaborator to the company. Her full time position was as a professor, researcher and the deputy chairman of the psychology department at Queens College (CUNY). She was also the wife of Andrew Chepaitis. In February of 2018, she was diagnosed with liver cancer. On March 15th, 2019 she passed away. From her diagnosis to her death, she remained an advisor and collaborator, helping the company to advance its research into the use of a new line of research, simulated visual impairment, as a means of testing new tactile font letter and number designs. She delighted in the work. Her collaboration and insightful guidance will be sorely missed. Her illness and death required that Andrew reduce the number of hours he worked so that he could care for and spend time with her and their children, and for grieving. As of this writing, he is increasing his workload as he hires household help. The team has stepped up its efforts in order to further the company’s work.

Outlook for 2019

Over the coming year, the company will build on the progress described above (and in greater depth below in this report). Our work will include:

• Follow-on sales of the Kickstarter of ELIA Starter Kit and ELIA Keyboards
• Engagement with established companies like HP, Microsoft and Apple to license the ELIA Frames Font to them and help to establish the font as a standard
• Successfully complete Y Combinator’s Startup School over the summer of 2019
• Further engagement of our community to build adoption of ELIA Frames
• Complete development of the TouchPrinter
• Raising new financing
• Expand the ELIA Team
• Expand our partner company collaborations (HP, MGI USA, Playmatics, Daly PR, etc.)
• Continuing development of a Labelmaker and a Tactile Computer Display

Recap of the Past Year and a Half

Cooper Hewitt Design Exhibit

In October of 2017, we were notified that the ELIA Frames Font would be a part of an exhibit called The Senses: Design Beyond Vision at the Smithsonian’s Cooper Hewitt Design Museum (from April 2018 to October 2018). This was a unique opportunity and we planned to leverage the exposure of the exhibit to tell our story and start to build community. A Kickstarter crowdsourcing campaign was a large part of that outreach effort, as Kickstarter campaigns are uniquely efficient in bringing together early adopters and supporters from around the world.

We were humbled to be part of the groundbreaking exhibit at the nation’s leading design museum. From the spring through the fall, the font was on display at the Smithsonian. It generated excellent press. At the Cooper Hewitt, we engaged in a number of events with blind and sighted visitors. In all, it was an excellent outreach opportunity. We also exhibited our TouchPrinter, in partnership with the San Francisco Lighthouse.

Kickstarter Summary

Kickstarter crowdsourcing campaigns help companies or people offer a product or service that is not yet available, and then utilize the capital from a successful campaign to make the rewards that the community demanded. In the process of executing a Kickstarter, one builds awareness, community and a one’s company.

Through your collaboration and support, our Kickstarter campaign to introduce the ELIA Frames™ Font into the world was successful. More importantly, we have laid the foundation upon which we can serve and build the ELIA community.

We knew that we wanted to offer a Starter Kit that is durable and can be used over and over again by people who want to learn ELIA Frames. We also wanted to test hypotheses about what products might be of interest. Our financial goal was to raise $25,000, as that would justify making the variable cost of the rewards we offered to the community.

Our Kickstarter generated $34,000 in revenue, and attracted the support of 613 people (67 of whom were known to us previously). We grew our Facebook community from 150 followers on Facebook to over 2,300 people around the world. Roughly 50,0000 people engaged our advertising, out of over 450,000 people who received advertising.

Kickstarter Press

We generated significant press as well, including coverage in Popular Science, Smithsonian Magazine, BBC Radio, 99U, Springwise, Graphic Design USA, in addition to foreign press coverage, and features in several blind community and design blogs.

Reward Details and Unexpected Outcomes

The goals of the Kickstarter may have seemed modest to some, but to us they were important steps to take as we introduce the ELIA Frames font and build momentum. Without this foundation, the upcoming work would not have been possible. You can read up on our reach goals below.

Through the Kickstarter, we have sought to: 1) Create a durable Starter Kit 2) Build awareness and community 3) Engage and learn from our community, and 4) Test hypotheses.

Create a Durable Starter Kit (Including a Learners’ Manual and Labels)

The most important result is that, through the Kickstarter we gathered enough pledges to print a durable ELIA Starter Kit. Previously, we held usability interviews with people who have a visual impairment, as well as those who serve them, such as occupational therapists. With their feedback, we identified that an essential resource for someone with a visual impairment would be an instruction manual that can be used repeatedly without significant wear. Currently, we have a great instruction manual, but prints from our wax jet printer are not incredibly durable. By printing a production run of embossed manuals, we can replace the current wax jetted manual with one that can withstand hundreds of uses. The new manual may experience such use at an organization for the blind or at a library.

Build Awareness and Community

We reached out to people who have a visual impairment, to people who serve them, and to organizations that serve our community. And through the Kickstarter, they reached out to us. Their families and friends also reached out to us. From those stakeholder groups we learned about their hopes and needs, and we learned from their questions and concerns. They have helped us direct our efforts during the campaign and plan for the future.

We also strengthened and started collaborations with organizations that serve people who have a visual impairment. The New York Public Library and the Washington DC Public Library have agreed to host materials in ELIA Frames. And Lighthouse Guild in New York City and our team will collaborate to provide training in ELIA Frames. We are reaching out to other organizations and look forward to announcing additional collaborations shortly.

Many people bought an ELIA Starter Kit and asked to have us share it with an organization. The current print run could easily be used here in New York City alone, where there are 363,000 people who have a severe visual impairment. That said, there are many people elsewhere as well who would benefit from a Starter Kit and as such, if the supporter would like their kit to go to a specific organization, we will gladly send the materials to the organization of their choice. We are in discussions with additional organizations about collaborating, and we will share those collaborations with this community when new organizations host ELIA materials or training. Are there organizations that you would like to host ELIA materials? Tell us at info@theeliaidea.com.

Keyboard Prototyping and Testing

As part of our Kickstarter, we also felt that we should test hypotheses. This has been a best practice for many companies who use Kickstarter to launch new products. We used it knowing that if we found that people wanted a reward, or did not, we would know something more about our business.

Through the Kickstarter, supporters expressed interest in keyboard formats different than the one offered. They also would like to use the keyboard to achieve different goals. Some wanted it for themselves, so that they could type faster. Others wanted it so that their children could learn to type more accurately. Lastly, there were supporters who would like to use the keyboard for gaming.

As promised, we will be making a keyboard overlay that fits the Apple keyboard. We will also be prototyping and testing other mechanical keyboard layouts, including a Cherry MX keyboard that several sighted typists suggested. Both efforts are being prototyped this month. The Apple Keyboard cover will be manufactured first. The Cherry MX iterative design effort will be ongoing. If you would be interested in becoming a beta tester for the Cherry MX keyboard keycaps, please let us know.

Lasting Commercial Operations Partners

For the Kickstarter we scaled up our operations, recruiting the best professionals in the crowdsourcing field to assist us. Van Alexandra, the leading crowdsourcing campaign management firm, agreed to work with us. They were a big reason why we attracted as much press coverage as we did. Christian Mrockza led our video production. Russell Marketing, a leading facebook advertising optimization firm, led a focused marketing campaign to maximize the effect of our advertising dollars and find hidden audiences.

We should note that in December we ask Van Alexandra to enter into a strategic partnership where they would serve as our outreach partners – to become part marketing department, part strategic partnership leads, part PR firm. They are capable of so much more than all that for us, and as such, as are honored that they agreed to sign on. Coincidentally, they formed a new company called Daly PR, through which our collaboration will continue.

New Printing Partners

We have partnered with three printing houses to produce the rewards. We will work with Cannelli Printing Company from West Haven, CT to manufacture our Starter Kits and labels, Studio on Fire to produce our poster, and C&T Finishing to create reading materials.

Canelli Printing

The team at the Canelli Printing Company creates beautiful printed materials. We cannot wait to share it with our community. The manuals and labels will be embossed on material that feels like paper, but is more durable. As the majority of our starter kits will be used by not-for-profit organizations that serve the blind, we felt that this new material would better withstand repeated use than traditional card stock paper.

MGI USA

As a result of the exposure our work received through the Kickstarter, we were contacted by MGI USA, a world leader in digital printing and finishing equipment that has developed a new printer that uses UV light and viscous ink to create high quality raised print and graphics. The printer can print single pages of tactile output inexpensively. One of their printers, C&T Finishing of South Windsor, CT has partnered with us to create additional tactile documents for inclusion in the starter kit. Whereas the team at Cannelli can print large runs of our manual at a competitive cost, C&T can print individual pages at lower cost. They feel much like the print from our Tektronix Phaser 300X printers, only the print is more flexible and therefore durable.

Initially, in the Starter Kit, in addition to the instruction manual and labels, we planned to include one additional document to read. It would have multiple types of content (poems, jokes, quotes, etc.) Now, we will offer individual recipients of the Starter Kits both the instruction manual and the labels, plus two documents of their choosing from a wider selection of twenty documents. Furthermore, we can provide the not-for-profits who receive the Starter Kits with all twenty of the documents we print in ELIA Frames.

Studio On Fire

The ELIA Poster will be printed by Studio On Fire, of St. Paul, Minnesota. They have worked with our poster and brand designers Jesse Reed and Hamish Smyth for several years. Jesse and Hamish recommend Studio on Fire's work as the output is fine art quality.

Reader Pilot Program / Community

Our reader pilot program allows us to better understand how ELIA Frames can be used in reader’s lives. Using a case study approach, we continue to work with individuals from our target audience (i.e. blind or have low vision) in order to best implement a program for new readers.

For the past year and a half of the program, we received emails from people eager to use ELIA Frames. Previously sighted adults, teachers of the visually impaired, parents, spouses, coordinators at non-profits, and more reached out to us. They are unable to utilize braille and want ELIA Frames for the wide variety of tasks and literacy for which braille is useful. We will be sharing those comments on the website shortly. We have collected their testimonials and will share them publicly.

We have also refined our approach to serving new learners. The program starts with an introductory phone call. We provide a learner’s manual, practice and exercise workbooks, and adhesive labels. Each week we schedule a follow up meeting (either in person or via phone calls) to discuss the benefits and challenges of reading ELIA.

This program has resulted in our focus on the first 45 seconds of exposure, the first 45 minutes of exposure and the first 45 hours of exposure. (See below page 14 for additional details on this perspective).

We are scaling up the pilot program to accommodate more people and host more frequent workshops. Do you know someone who wants to learn the ELIA Frames? We will also seek foundation and government funding for the pilot program.

Anyone who is interested in joining the program should email info@theeliaidea.com for more information.

Font Iteration

Over 2018, we redesigned the ELIA Frames Font. ELIA Frames now includes four newly designed letters, new numbers and capital letters, as well as updated punctuation. This redesign, initiated during the Kickstarter due to feedback from the blind community, resulted in an improved font that is easier to learn and read. It is even cleaner, and therefore easier to learn, than the design we shared through the Kickstarter. On October 1st, 2018, we released the new font.

Revenue model

Our ecosystem of products has four building block products - hardware, software, curriculum and low tech independence aids (e.g. sheets of ELIA Frames labels). This past year has seen progress in each of these revenue categories.

Low Tech Aids

This year we intensely focused on user experience and we came to the conclusion that of all the uses of the ELIA Frames™ Font, the most important role of ELIA Frames was low tech - labeling. We evaluated is the user’s experience for the first 45 seconds of their exposure to ELIA Frames. We asked, what is the reader’s experience for the first 45 minutes of the product? What do they get out of it? Most readers of ELIA will use ELIA Frames first for labeling. It will provide them with independence. As more reading materials become available in ELIA Frames, they will read more extensively with it. We know this through conversations with end users and through reading literature on braille usage - the majority of braille readers use braille primarily for labeling and note taking. They also take pride in their literacy through reading texts in braille, but that is not its primary use. (This may be because reading with braille is often slow).

Hardware

Keyboard

The major surprise of the Kickstarter was that the ELIA Keyboard was the most demanded product that we had to offer. It was doubly surprising that it was sighted people who wanted it, including gamers. We hadn’t anticipated that, and indeed when we considered whether we needed to be more focused in our offerings, the keyboard was the one product offering that we considered dropping. Luckily, people had advised us to treat the Kickstarter as an experiment through which we could test hypotheses. The keyboard was a pleasant surprise. In 2019, we will be beta testing the Keyboard with gamers and other groups.

TouchPrinter

As we moved to a final design for manufacturing, HP recommended that we engage their product development partners at Simplexity Product Design. We did. In July of 2019 their team their team, in collaboration with our team, completed the next phase of the design work. As they have deep experience with the HP printer components, they have been able to lend expertise that was unavailable outside of their company, including unique firmware and printer path design capabilities that will both shrink the printers footprint and reduce print time. We are raising capital to complete the next phase and launch the printer. The end of 2019 is the likely launch date.

Software

ELIA Frames Font

The ELIA Frames Font underwent a major and unexpected redesign. Through our collaborations with Adam Linn and Reed DeWinter, we redesigned 14 of the font’s alphanumeric characters and the capital letters. It is now easier to read, and this is especially true for new learners and the sighted. It is even easier to learn and share. We and our readers are very excited about it.

We have identified font software innovations that would present fonts optimally for tactile or visual reading. These innovations would allow for optimization of font presentation variables across font sizes. What we have found is that, for example, a line width, gap or space should not be uniformly scaled across font sizes for reading at different font sizes, rather the variables should be scaled according to data that shows what the optimum presentations are for each font size (or presentation environment).

Computer Games

Games are both a source of future revenue and a resource for font iterations. The font itself is engaging in several existing popular game formats (e.g. Word Mole, Tetris, Typing Tutor, Lumosity reading based tools). And for the designing of fonts for additional alphabets, like Persian, Cyrillic, Greek or Hebrew, game formats can be useful for iteratively testing symbols that can serve as good tactile representations of the core alphabets’ letters. We will be using a simulated impairment program that was developed by Dr. Andrea Li of Queens College. With it, we can inexpensively test different symbols through a “frosted glass” computer generated filter that correlates with the experience of reading with one’s fingers.

Curriculum

The Kickstarter included two products, the ELIA Starter Kit and the ELIA Classroom Kit, that can help people learn ELIA Frames and facilitate adoption. The former has been used extensively during our pilot program. The latter has been tested in classrooms with sighted students and resulted in a substantial portion of the classroom deciding to use ELIA Frames as a secret code.

Adoption of the ELIA Frames Alphabet, and tactile graphics more generally, will happen faster as we introduce specialized curriculum into our education and health care systems. We have the core product created. It serves the needs of adults who do not have special needs. It was designed for class room instruction and is very good for teaching in that setting. We can customize this product so that people can more easily learn ELIA Frames in their homes. We can customize it for younger students, for people with special needs (e.g. people with a hearing impairment), and for different teachers (occupational therapists, main stream classroom teachers, family members, speech pathologists, etc.). We can create certifications that will enable people to create their own instructional services. And we can partner with publishers to achieve greater market penetration.

Design for Usability – ELIA Frames and the First 45 seconds, First 45 minutes, First 45 hours

Letter Redesign focused on the first 45 seconds of exposure to the font

How do we get people excited to learn ELIA Frames from the moment they first touch it? With Adam’s help, we were exploring the learning experience and the first 45 seconds of a person’s exposure to the ELIA Frames Font. We used our tactile font design best practices, and the data from our studies, to take a fresh critical look at each font glyph. The result is improved designs for the A, B, J, U, numbers 0 through 9, and more functional capital letters. The letter A looks refreshingly more like an A, and the U is far more intuitive. The letters and numbers are now less cluttered, more intuitive and more easily discernable from each other.

Labels and the first 45 minutes of use

How can ELIA Frames make an immediate positive impact on a person’s life, after, for example 45 minutes of learning?

We asked ourselves and our pilot program participants how we can best serve our community. We have always believed that easy literacy was the main benefit of ELIA Frames. But our conversations led us to believe that ELIA Frames is first and foremost a good labeling tool. And that in the first day of use, most people will use it for that, and that they would be overjoyed to use it for that. With it, they will have independence that they and their families have struggled to achieve without tactile labels. Coincidentally, the best use of ELIA Frames among the sighted is for labeling a keyboard!

As a result of our discussions, our initial instruction has been redesigned to include more emphasis on labels. We will also be creating a typing game that teaches people to type faster and more accurately, whether they have a visual impairment or are sighted.

It should be noted that teaching a person who has lost his/her sight to use the computer so that they can maintain employment takes an estimated 400 hours of training. We believe that the ELIA Keyboard will reduce the time required to gain this skill. We will run a research study to discern what effects the keyboard has on training.

Second Use – Reading and the first 45 hours of use

Adults take pride in knowing that they are literate. Literacy is however, not static – people feel literate when they read and write. Being cut off from the written word limits a person’s employment, independence and interdependence. Even just the literacy associate with labels has profound consequences on a person’s self-confidence and quality of life. Because people know that personal independence is a prerequisite for the pursuit of happiness (employment, leisure, relationships, hobbies, STEAM, self-improvement, a healthy diet).

Proficient, speedy tactile reading is a skill that requires practice and time. We do not know what reading speeds are achievable with ELIA Frames, only that learning ELIA Frames takes a fraction of the time that it takes a person to learn braille (if they are able to learn it at all). Furthermore, in a day, people can achieve what would take years with braille. And in a week, a person can achieve what it would take a person decades to achieve. ELIA Frames is just a standard alphabet font, a new way to present familiar letters. It is not a new alphabet, as braille is.

A Change in Approach

Three changes have occurred to our work approach perspective.

Movement vs. Progress

In late 2018, we met with Brian O’Kelly, the founder of AppNexus, who suggested that we needed to get out of our comfort zone and engage our community beyond what we have been doing. He stated that while we could continue to make the sort of progress we have been making, that we would only truly make a difference if we started a movement around ELIA Frames. This would require that we stop doing those tasks that we are comfortable and good at doing (e.g. work in the lab) and rather get out of our comfort zone and find ways to creatively engage our community. What does a movement require? We believe it is more of what we did in 2018 (building community, offering products, outreach to the press), less of what we did prior to that (R&D).

We recently also spoke with Andy Palmer, the founder of Tamr, and asked him for his thoughts on building a movement vs. making progress. He pointed out that, and this is something that Brian had touched on, tying ELIA Frames into products that large mainstream companies already offer. If we do this, then we would be able to leverage their reach to introduce the font to our target and impact audiences. As we reach out to companies, we will keep you abreast of our progress.

Impact and Target Audiences

This year we learned that for a movement to take root, we will need to nurture two communities – a target audience and an impact audience. The distinction being that the impact audience is the audience that will use and benefit from our products, while the target audience is people who will indirectly benefit from our products’ most important functionality, or may only benefit from a few of its features (but their day to day lives aren’t dramatically improved as a result of the wide range of benefits that our products offer).

A good company analogy is Patagonia. For its impact audience, Patagonia products are essential. Their gear is premium high performance gear, meant to withstand intense conditions where its performance might be the difference between life and death, e.g. for a climber. For the most of Patagonia’s customers, sure, they keep us warm, but what the products stand for - the environmentally and socially conscientious way that they are made - that is the products’ major benefit. How do we engage both of our audiences? We learned a little about that through the Kickstarter, where the majority of our backers did not have a visual impairment.

Radical Transparency

Jeff Hollander (of Seventh Generation) recommends that a company engage in Radical Transparency. His recommendations were for both transparency internally with employees and stakeholders and externally with customers and the community. What radical transparency means beyond that, we are learning. There have been a few moments this year when we experienced challenges and it was necessary. Hopefully, in the coming year there will be moments when we share the momentum, and funny happenings, and where we share the questions with which we struggle.

Along those lines, there are two challenges that will occupy the early part of this year – financing and product focus.