Four VCU Brandcenter graduates have worked together to invent a device to help those with autism and other disabilities communicate their needs with the push of a button.
Four VCU Brandcenter graduates have worked together to invent a device to help those with autism and other disabilities communicate their needs with the push of a button.
Matt Reamer, along with classmates Donnie Plumly, Mary Toves, and Chad Woods created Dustin’s Words, a device that uses buttons with specific icons on them when pushed sends a text message to a family member or caregiver’s phone to convey that person’s needs.
Reamer was inspired to create the device after watching his brother Dustin, also has autism, and cannot speak, struggle to communicate his whole life.
“My brother is 30-years-old and was born without oxygen in his body; therefore, he was in an incubator for the first few months of his life,” Reamer said. These challenges, paired with him developing autism as he grew a little older, 2-3 years old, rendered him with the verbal ability of a 1-2 year old and affected his physical abilities as well.”
Reamer added Dustin could only communicate effectively with their mother which is after 30 years of working together and developing their own language. The idea for a tool to help his brother sparked his second year of grad school which he honed up until he graduated in 2014.
“The first prototype version of the device took me about three to four months with testing, design, build and fixing bugs in the software/hardware,” he said. “I did this in my last semester of graduate school.”
After graduating from the Brandcenter, Reamer took a job in Los Angeles with advertising agency Team One. It was there around December of that year along with the push and expertise of his co-workers that he got the ball rolling for Dustin’s Words.
Mary Toves, product manager for Dustin’s Words, said Dustin’s Words is as simple as if you were sending a text message to your friend.
“When the user presses a button the microcontroller in the product sends the message over Wi-Fi to a service and that service then sends it off to the caregiver’s phone,” said Toves. “We wanted to make it that easy to use because of limitations of our primary users.”
The group launched an Indiegogo campaign May 21 with the goal of raising $20,000 by June 30 to produce 100 of the devices to give to 100 families for free. So far, the group has raised $11,154 from 188 backers on their campaign.
The Dustin’s Words device has different icons on it that the user can push to indicate what their needs are such as being hungry, sick, or tired. The group has partnered with The Noun Project, a Los Angeles-based company that has an online database of thousands of icons. The Noun Project catalogs them on its website for people to use and has 28 icons for Dustin’s Words currently listed on its site.
“We’re partnering with them to create an icon-system for Dustin’s Words that can be custom-tailored to each individual family’s needs,” Toves said. “Dustin really loves to ride on his scooter so he would have a symbol that says mom I want to go for a ride on my scooter.”
Toves added that most of the icons are need-based, but some of the icons will be tailored to things that are for fun to make the users happy.
Reamer and the rest of the team have been working with Particle, a Los Angeles-based company to produce the device.
“Particle is a company that enables us to build an Arduino-like platform that lives in the cloud,” Reamer said. “This gives buttons and functions on Dustin’s Words the ability to be updated and customized for each individual family’s needs using a variety of online services.”
So far, the group has been contacted by 50 families in the past month with children with autism according to Toves. Most of the devices were designed for those with autism, but Toves said Dustin’s Words could also help people who have Rett Syndrome, ALS, brain injuries, or people who’ve had a stroke.
“Any sort of communication challenge could benefit from this device,” she said.
The group hopes to start production and delivering the first 100 devices for free once they receive that funding. Toves said they hope to receive feedback from the families so they can keep improving the devices in the long run.
“The first 100 are acting as a beta test for us,” she said.
Reamer added once they deliver the first 100, they hope to continue offering the devices for free or at most a low cost to the families who need them.
“If this model turns out to be hard for us to maintain {financially}, we would only charge cost for the devices, which is currently around $100 but we are working to drive the price per unit down as we make connections to those in the industry,” he said.