St Dunstan’s, the charity for visually impaired ex servicemen, have expressed an interest in testing the prototype, and the Verbal Interface.

I have had a chat there with Paul Harbord  and Ray Hazan, and they expressed great interest in getting involved.

This is terrific news for us, as we are keen both to involve charities in both testing the Phone to make sure the design and interface work perfectly, but also to tap into the huge and vociferous related communities to spread the word.

The trickiest part of the Blind Phone is the verbal interface. To use it, you would have navigate through the phone’s functions by listening to the menus, much like an IVR system you would get when you call the bank.

The trouble is that the bank systems are way too slow to use on a regular basis without some way of using shortcuts, so that all has to be worked out. And then the verbal interface has to be programmed into the operating system on the phone.

The start is getting that designed. While it is obviously something I am very passionate about, I have to be realistic about the amount of time I can put into this, and to get it right will take quite a rigorous design process. Something perfect for the academic approach.

So I had a chat with John Turner and Phil Twronga form Westminster University. They are involved in a course for Mobile and Wireless Computing, and are interested in taking on the verbal interface design as a master project for one of their students.
Hopefully they will be able to find a post graduate student who will be interested in working on a ‘live’ product. Let’s see!

Now I haven’t produced a mobile phone myself before, so the best course of action seemed to be to find someone who did this for a living. While large manufacturers could easily produce it, it would take a lot of time and money to get in front of them, and then there are no guarantees.

So I have been talking to Nick Davey from Tattu. Tattu are a company that design mobile phones for specific markets – either low cost handsets for the Pay As You Go youth market or handsets  designed for certain brands. They did a great phone for Disney, that not only had a physical design that incorporated the Ears motif, but also had an online parental control feature.

They have a design house in the UK and a partner one in the US, and work with production partners in China to allow production of low volumes at high quality.

It’s looking very promising – According to Nick, Blind Phone is, despite the waterproof requirement, a fairly simple device to make. The innards are quite low spec and there’s no need for a screen, and the only thing needed on top of the basic functions is BlueTooth.

It’s early days of course, but just talking to someone who can actually make it happen just makes everything a bit more real.

Gary Marshall from XL PR organised a radio interview on Insight Radio, the RNIB sponsored online and cable radio station.

It was really interesting to talk to Steven Scott, the morning presenter, to get the perspective of an eminent member of the blind and partially sighted community.

These interviews are really very encouraging, and puts the onus on me to organize a team to get the Blind Phone built. Because I’m already involved in a funded start up TagText, and so committed to making that happen, I really need to build up a group of people or organisations to make this happen.

So before the awards, I got interviewed by Reuters.

My 15 seconds of fame. It was on telly in Australia, and an old chum from uni saw it, and got in contact!

Wow, what an evening.

I had been at the MEX conference during the day, and the breadth of people there, from all over the world, was exhilarating. It is strange to work in such a niche business, practising arcane arts that have an impact on so many people’s lives, yet there are very few places where we can sit down together and chew the fat.

Then Em turned up and we were the first ones in. It’s odd, but although I’d been working on projects that have won awards, I have never been up for one personally before. I was really nervous.

Then everyone else piled in, and things kicked off. The Blind Phone was firstly up for the Freelance section, and when it lost to Cloudaware, I started packing up my stuff. I couldn’t see how I could win the top prize if I hadn’t won my section. Anyway I was up against TapTu and MyView I was a bit dejected it must be said – especially after the interview with Reuters making the whole thing seem possible.

Then they announced it and it all went a bit blurry. There was a rambling thankyou and a lot of back patting. Marek and Mike Grenville were really lovely, and the next hour or so disappeared in a whirl of handshaking and chats.

Well. This is kind of the start.