Several years ago, Austin, Texas-based tech entrepreneur Jean Anne Booth was enjoying an early retirement as a Liveaboard scuba dive master. Having sold two companies—Luminary Micro to Texas Instruments in 2009 and Intrinsity to Apple in 2010—she thought she was done with the tech world.
But then her mother started getting frail and, like many baby boomers, Booth found herself switching roles to caregiver. Frustrated while searching for suitable tech products to support her mother's independence, Booth did what many entrepreneurs do—she created a company, UnaliWear, and made the product herself.
Initially funded through a Kickstarter campaign, UnaliWear recently closed a $3.5 million Series A funding round from VCs including Austin-based True Wealth Ventures. The firm's first product, currently in beta testing with 7,000 elders, is called the Kanega watch. PCMag was in Austin recently and sat down with Booth to learn more.
The Kanega name, Booth told PCMag, "draws on my Cherokee heritage, on my mother's side, as Unali means 'friend' and Kanega means 'speak' in the Cherokee language.
"I wanted to honor that connection as I created something to improve elders' lives. My mom was turning 80, but she fiercely valued her independence and didn't want to leave the strong network of friends she has in San Antonio, Texas," Booth said. "She's also still totally cognitively capable, but physically frail, and I wanted to keep her safe. I took an engineering spreadsheet over to her house with all the P.E.R.S [Personal Emergency Response Systems]—the 'Help, I've fallen and I can't get up' products'—options. But she just refused, point blank, to countenance wearing any of them."
At this point, we should mention that Joan, Jean Anne's mother, is a former fashion model (in fact, that's Joan glamorously posing in the shots in this story) and not a shrinking violet. She took one look at the deeply unattractive "old people products" and dug her heels in. Booth didn't blame her.
"I'm a nerd's nerd," laughed Booth, "and I wouldn't wear one of those stigmatizing P.E.R.S. devices, so why would I expect my mom to do so? She told me she'd throw it out the window if I bought her one. So I said, 'Great—you're hired!'—and she's now our Senior User Experience Advisor."
With built-in cellular and Wi-Fi access, the Kanega watch doesn't require tethering to a smartphone. When the watch launches in mid-2017, users will pay an activation fee of $50, plus a monthly charge of $49.99, which covers cellular service; medical alerts and operator call-back for falls panic and dementia-related confusion; and GPS for getting people home safely via jovial, step-by-step instructions.
Kanega is voice-activated for hands-free use, does medication reminder prompts, and solicits self-reporting. So users can say, 'Did I take my meds at noon?' and Kanega will scroll back to check. It responds to affectionate monikers, too.
"My mother calls her Kanega watch, 'Fred Astaire'," smiled Booth. "She inspired us not to pre-set a wake word, like 'Siri' or 'OK, Google.' Instead, the user takes the watch out of the box, it starts up and says, 'What's my name?', gently asking for confirmation three times to set the voice print," Booth said. "In order to get a range of voices to train the system, we've also opened up the beta to volunteers to provide Audio recording samples. But the Kanega can also be operated manually to overcome speech impediment, perhaps due to strokes, as well."
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Booth gave us a quick demo of a few feedback loops and it works well. Deliberately, it also looks like a classic watch, with big enough white-on-black digits to be readable without locating your reading glasses. That was another of Joan's interventions into the product spec and roadmap.
"Initially, we tested different colorway options but my mom took me aside after a product design user testing feedback session and said, 'You know we can't read that, don't you? Make it white on black.' So we did. And she was right."
The Kanega is still in beta, but those interested in the gadget can sign up on the UnaliWear website to get on the company's pre-order list. Pricing was not revealed, but the Kickstarter campaign says the retail price for the watch is $299.