[Ohio-talk] new smart watch

[James Fetter]

Here it is. By the way, I think that we should all take issue with the 
first sentence, but notwithstanding that, it is very informative.

This Korean startup is making wearables for the blind, but its ambition 
is much bigger
Colin Moreshead
Colin Moreshead
17 hours ago

I need to begin with a disclaimer: if you’re reading this sentence right 
now, you don’t need the product featured in this article. But trust me, 
it’s worth
a look all the same.

Dot1

The smartwatch market has exploded over the past few years. In fact, 
reports show that smartwatch sales have
increased an astronomical 457 percent
  in the last year alone, a figure that can be attributed to the Apple 
Watch. Since its release in April,
Apple’s flagship wearable has captured a full three-quarters of the market,
reaching about 4 million units sold to date. One thing you could safely 
assume about nearly every one of those customers, though – they can all see.

The World Health Organization estimates that there are
285 million people with severe visual impairment around the world,
of whom 39 million are completely blind. Among them, literacy is a 
serious issue because access to Braille education and materials is 
limited. Even for
the literate blind, reading is laborious – one Braille Bible comes in 40 
volumes, for example – and remains largely limited to the printed word. 
Active
Braille technology, which displays changing Braille text in real time, 
typically cost upward of US$3,000 and haven’t changed much over the past 
decade.

Dot
  is a South Korean startup that believes the active Braille market is 
ripe for disruption. It has produced an active Braille smartwatch that’s 
a low-cost
education and communication tool for the blind. With it, Dot hopes to 
return equal information access to a demographic that has been left 
behind in the
age of real-time digital text.

A tactile experience

Dot2

The Dot smartwatch appears, at first glance, like one of the many 
screenless wearables on the market already. You might mistake it for a 
white
Fitbit
  from its telltale bulge where the hardware module rests atop the 
wearer’s wrist. That module houses four “cells” of six active dots each 
– enough for
four Braille characters to be displayed at once. The device can be 
calibrated to display new characters at speeds ranging from a glacial 1 
hertz to a breakneck
100 hertz; development has yielded a battery life of 10 hours, which 
will give average users five days between charges, Dot says.

The device is based on haptic technology, which provides feedback or 
information in real time through touch. By linking to any Bluetooth 
device, the Dot
smartwatch can pull text from applications like iMessage using voice 
commands. Co-founder and CEO Eric Ju Yoon Kim says that Dot gives users 
the chance
to read text their own way.

“Until now, if you got a message on iOS from your girlfriend, for 
example, you had to listen to Siri read it to you in that voice, which 
is impersonal,”
Kim explains. “Wouldn’t you rather read it yourself and hear your 
girlfriend’s voice saying it in your head?”

As a wearable, Dot is still without competition. Current industry 
leaders produce hardware in the form of keyboards with active Braille 
cells that connect
to computers via USB, with price tags in the thousands of dollars. Kim 
tells Tech in Asia that when the Dot smartwatch goes on sale in the 
United States
this December, it will retail for less than US$300.

Going global
Part of the Dot team: lead designer Mason Joo, CEO Eric Kim, CTO Ki 
Sung, and software engineer Juhwan Lim.

(L-R): Lead designer Mason Joo, CEO Eric Kim, CTO Ki Sung, and software 
engineer Juhwan Lim.

Kim founded Dot with Titus Cheng, a classmate from the University of 
Washington. The team they built in Seoul includes specialists in 
hardware, software,
and design. In its first round of seed funding, Dot raised US$100,000 
from the
ActnerLab
accelerator and an additional $500,000 from the South Korean government’s
Tech Incubator Program for Startup
  (TIPS). The company will begin its second round of seed funding in 
August with a goal of raising US$1 million, and it’s hoping for 
international investors
to help promote the company’s products overseas.

Though the smartwatch will go on sale in the US and Canada first, Dot is 
trying out other applications for its active Braille modules in South 
Korea. In
a push that Kim is calling “public Braille,” the company has installed 
modules at ATMs and in train stations. Like the smartwatch, these 
modules can be
programmed to display information updated in real time, such as account 
balance information or a subway schedule.

“The Braille at ATMs currently tells you, ‘This is an ATM,’ which isn’t 
super helpful,” says Kim. “I think these sorts of public places, and the 
public
sector in particular, could become our largest market in the future.”

That means expanding to other countries like Japan and China. Japan has 
a strong history of updating infrastructure to reflect the needs of its 
disabled
citizens, as evidenced by the country’s ubiquitous tactile paving. China 
accounts for nearly one-fifth of the world’s blind population and boasts 
a rapidly
evolving public infrastructure. Kim sees huge growth potential in both 
markets and says Dot’s next few hires later this year will likely 
reflect that.

Educating a clientele

Kim admits that part of the challenge that lies before his company is 
creating a broader demand for the product. Unlike Apple or Samsung, Dot 
has an immediate,
vested interest in promoting literacy as a means of increasing its 
number of potential customers. By many accounts, Braille literacy has 
actually fallen
over the past half-century; Kim attributes that to the lack of effective 
educational tools.

“90 percent of blind people become blind after birth, and there’s 
nothing for them right now – they lose their access to information so 
suddenly,” says
Kim. “Dot can be their lifeline, so they can learn Braille and access 
everyday information through their fingers, which is the goal of Braille 
literacy.”

Everyday language has some existing haptic support in the form of 
single-line active Braille devices, but Dot is concerned that education 
requiring complex
text and diagrams, like mathematics, is still off-limits to the blind. 
To solve that, the company is also developing a tablet device to display 
multi-line
text, graphs, and shapes. Native educational apps could be part of Dot’s 
next developmental phase.

Making waves

Dot3

Dot is starting with only 10,000 smartwatches for its release this 
December, but the company is poised to take advantage of an 
underdeveloped market. The
Dot team has just welcomed Dr. Dong-Soo Kwon of
KAIST,
South Korea’s top science and engineering university. He adds 54 patents 
in haptic technology to Dot’s existing five, providing a strong head 
start over
potential competitors for the company, founded only one year ago.

Those patents might also be a ticket to deals with larger companies. 
Smart device makers like Apple and Samsung have experimented with 
haptics to improve
the way their models vibrate, and Kim says that Dot hopes to innovate 
products meant for the sighted as well.

Dot’s primary mission remains information accessibility for the blind. 
Kim has plenty of ideas for how their four-cell module can grant the 
blind access
to things that have gone digital, like microwaves or rice cookers. He 
wants to bring the blind up to speed on the same advances the rest of us 
enjoy.

“Every time technology moves forward we see more real-time information, 
but for the blind, that’s a widening discrimination gap,” explains Kim. 
“We are
solving that information discrimination with the equal accessibility the 
Dot smartwatch provides.”

Editing by Terence Lee and J.T. Quigley
(And yes, we're serious about ethics and transparency. More information
here.
)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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techinasia-8ad2f16f1cfd0d6443a089c0624042b4
Leslie
16 hours ago
This is definitely more useful than apple watch or pebble. This is what 
I call real innovation. Kudos

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techinasia-ed08ffe048c32cd55986623fd0aac732
Colin Moreshead
  Leslie
12 hours ago
And it uses the same module they plan to use for public Braille, meaning 
that large public sector orders mean lower average cost for private 
customers!

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techinasia-4908abf01ae104097641c7984131e9dd
Eric Ju Yoon Kim
  Colin Moreshead
7 hours ago
Thanks you Colin, here is an example of ATM dot module!

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techinasia-3295c76acbf4caaed33c36b1b5fc2cb1
Willis Wee
  Leslie
15 hours ago
Agree. I hope the market is big enough that it attracts investments from 
investors. great cause and business :)

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techinasia-4908abf01ae104097641c7984131e9dd
Eric Ju Yoon Kim
  Leslie
8 hours ago
Hello Leslie, I'm Eric from the team dot. Thanks for your compliment, we 
will do our best!

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kristiankolby
Kristian Kolby
6 hours ago
Took the liberty to advice the blind communitiy in Denmark!
I think they were exited, please make this avaliable in Europe/Scandinavia

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techinasia-4908abf01ae104097641c7984131e9dd
Eric Ju Yoon Kim
  Kristian Kolby
6 hours ago
Thank you, Kristian! I'm really glad that they were excited! :)
Of course we will make this available in Europe/Scandinavia!
For the Scandinavia, we have talked with communities in Sweden so far.
If you don't mind, would you please connect us to your connections?
Here's my mail! eric at dotincorp.com

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kristiankolby
Kristian Kolby
8 hours ago
Works with Android?

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techinasia-ed08ffe048c32cd55986623fd0aac732
Colin Moreshead
  Kristian Kolby
8 hours ago
Yes! Any device that can be connected via Bluetooth. Android and iOS are 
both supported.

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techinasia-4908abf01ae104097641c7984131e9dd
Eric Ju Yoon Kim
  Colin Moreshead
7 hours ago
Yes! Both Android and iOS :) Thanks for your kind explanation Colin!

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techinasia-ce80993289bf0e45c95ed6c95bfdd07d
David Corbin
14 hours ago
Very cool idea! I want to try it, haha. They should come to Tech in Asia 
Tokyo and exhibit!

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techinasia-4908abf01ae104097641c7984131e9dd
Eric Ju Yoon Kim
  David Corbin
7 hours ago
Thank you, David! We will let you know when our first product released!
And as you said, we are applying startup booth at Bootstrap Alley, and 
Arena now!

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techinasia-ce80993289bf0e45c95ed6c95bfdd07d
David Corbin
  Eric Ju Yoon Kim
4 hours ago
Awesome! Thanks for considering us :-)

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techinasia-63dc7ed1010d3c3b8269faf0ba7491d4
Terence Lee
16 hours ago
A rare startup that has potential to make a huge impact while making money.

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techinasia-4908abf01ae104097641c7984131e9dd
Eric Ju Yoon Kim
  Terence Lee
6 hours ago
Thank you, Terence! We will do our best to impact the world.

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