As we wind down the year, I rounded up a smattering of guests from the show this year for two end-of-the-year episodes. For these two episodes, I asked each guest, “what are you most looking forward to in 2021 as it relates to your industry, expertise and passion?” This episode features seven guests related to the hearables and voice industry. Part two will be released next week and feature guests from the hearing health industry.
This episode features:
- Andy Bellavia – Director of Market Development at Knowles
- Shari Eberts – Hearing Health Advocate; Founder of the blog Living With Hearing Loss; Editor at Hearing Health & Technology Matters
- Brielle Nickoloff – Head of Product at Botmock
- Ryan Kraudel – VP Marketing at Valencell
- Carl Thomas – Founder of Audiowings
- Scot & Susan Westwater – Founders of Pragmatic Digital
Thank you to everyone who has tuned into Future Ear Radio this year and made this first year of podcasting so special and rewarding. I appreciate all of the support and feedback more than you all know and I can’t wait for year two and all the great conversations I plan on having on the podcast in 2021!
-Thanks for Reading-
Dave
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Dave Kemp:
Hey everyone. Just wanted to say thank you to all of you for tuning into Future Ear this year. All of the support, all of the feedback that I’ve gotten has been nothing short of amazing. Doing this podcast, getting to meet all these guests and interview them, and then all the feedback from you the listeners, has been just such a rewarding experience. And I wanted to make sure to say thank you because without you, this podcast wouldn’t really be where it is. So I have some awesome episodes that I’m looking forward to in 2021. Some great conversations lined up that I think you’re really going to enjoy.
Dave Kemp:
For these last two episodes, they’re going to be compilations. I’m trying to end things on a bit of a high note here, a little bit of an optimistic outlook, where I asked each of these guests who had been on the podcast this year, what are the things that you’re looking forward to as we head into 2021, as it relates to your industry, your area of expertise and your passion. So you’re about to hear this episode, which is all from guests that were from the hearables world. So, I hope you enjoy. Stay tuned for the second one that will be around hearing health and audiology. And I can’t wait to share the podcast with you again in 2021.
Dave Kemp:
All right, Andy Bellavia, welcome back to the podcast. I think you’re actually probably winning in terms of being on the podcast the most times as reoccurring guests. We’ve had a number of different discussions. We’ve talked about hearables, we’ve talked about hearing healthcare, we’ve talked about voice technology and all the different use cases in between. So, you’re sort of polymathic when it comes to this space, but like I’m doing with everybody on this episode, really trying to get a sense of what you’re excited about heading into 2021 as it relates to these different fields. So, just let it rip, let me know what’s on your mind? What are you gung ho about moving into next year?
Andy Bellavia:
Well, thanks Dave. I mean, I appreciate the chance to talk to these things. I think the polymath may be a little bit overdoing it, but still I have a foot in each door. And that in fact colors how I look at 2021, because we’ve talked multiple times about what’s coming together in the hearable space. You’re getting to devices that are almost all day wear, the hardware is getting a lot better. You have AMC really coming into its own. Then you have voice apps for hearables, like [inaudible 00:02:27] Square. And even Spotify has voice controls, which really make it interesting and worthwhile to have hearables in your ear for more and more today. But what I’m really excited for actually is the power that hearables are bringing to the hearing care space. And I think back to, you had Kim Cabot on the podcast or Carlstrom.
Dave Kemp:
Yeah.
Andy Bellavia:
And I remember her saying that we shouldn’t be forcing a $5,000 solution on a person with a $500 problem. I think about people … I mean, if you look at the stats, I have some stats from Johns Hopkins, which show that an 80 year old and above, severe hearing loss predominates, but below the age of 80 years, more people have mild or moderate hearing loss. But by and large, they’re not being served today. That can be any combination of reasons. It can be cost of a hearing aid devices, it can be the stigma, it can be the high friction associated with going down the full audiological path. Or now, and really we’re going to see this in 2021, is that effective consumer solutions are beginning to proliferate. And we’ve had some companies in this space. For example, Nuheara really has an effective product on the market for years. One of the early leaders and still an excellent product today.
Andy Bellavia:
But in the context of the total number of people with mild to moderate hearing loss, the solutions on the market today aren’t really moving the needle. Only a small fraction of people who have mild or moderate hearing loss are using them and even less are getting full hearing aids. But now you’re starting to see things really happening. All of union, for example, they announced, and in the first quarter that they’re going to roll out their consumer device, which is pretty stylish. Has premium music quality as well and it’s an FDA registered hearing aid. You also have Apple putting their toe in the water with beautiful machinations in iOS 14. And you have most significantly Qualcomm making the partnership with the hearing software company, Jacoti, which promises then to make available mild to moderate hearing loss solutions to millions of people.
Andy Bellavia:
I honestly don’t think that can be underestimated, what effect that’s going to have. And you can even, when you listen to people from Jacoti and you listen to people from Qualcomm, speak about hearing loss and mitigation, you hear them talking in really excited tones. So I’m looking forward to a really significant roll-out of situational hearing correction in hearable devices. And I think that’s going to have a really big effect on enhancing people’s quality of life. And that’s even apart from talking about developing countries, because in developing countries, where many, many people don’t have access to professional hearing care and can’t afford a full hearing aid device. This is going to be a game changer for their ability to get some sort of solution. In that case, even a 70% solution will be deeply meaningful compared to no solution at all.
Andy Bellavia:
And I think I’ll close this out by saying, I think this is the time when we really reached continuum of hearing care from mild to very severe. Even in the panel that Justin for Nuheara did with the NHL, he said, he believes that this over-the-counter device will actually increase the sales of full hearing aids. And I agree with him there because as more people wear things in their ears and start to get used to the fact that they can have hearing enhancements and situational use, by the time they get to the point where they need a full hearing aid, they’re going to be very comfortable with something in their ears. They’re not going to feel the stigma associated with it. And therefore the adoption rates of true hearing aids for the market in which they serve best is only going to go up. And I think that’s going to be a good thing for everybody.
Dave Kemp:
Yeah. No, I think that was really well said. And I agree with you, I share your enthusiasm. That Jacoti thing it’s such a game changer. On that same episode with Kim Cabot, she mentioned, we were using the parallel of the optometry industry and she used the example of cheater lenses as it relates to growing the prescription glasses, product category. And I look at this as this is the cheater’s moment in this industry, because it’s the standardization of that feature more or less. It’s no way is it going to replace hearing aids or anything like that, but it’s going to be that very first step that I think a lot of people are going to be exposed to. And I share your same optimism.
Dave Kemp:
And I think this idea that the more people that are exposed to this and understanding that so few people are, that they, A, have a loss and B, what it sounds like to have a level of the sound around them restored, I just don’t think that you can really underestimate the impact that that could ultimately have. Like you said, more people just become comfortable with this idea and more people are open to, “Okay, I’ve had this for a few years, my hearing loss maybe has progressed. I want to go see an expert, I want to see a hearing health solution or a hearing health expert.” These are the kinds of things that I think will grow the market ultimately. And I share your enthusiasm. I’m really excited about that heading into next year.
Andy Bellavia:
Yeah. So am I. And that’s really a process that’s going to take years to really achieve mass adoption, but I think 2021 is a year that that aircraft leaves the runway. So I’m really excited for the coming 12 months.
Dave Kemp:
Love it. Awesome. Well, cool. Andy, thank you for joining the podcast as many times as you did this year. I’m looking forward to all the chats that we’re going to have here in 2021.
Andy Bellavia:
I’m looking forward to it as well. And really thanks for having me out as many times as you did.
Dave Kemp:
All right. So we got Shari Eberts here. Shari was on episode 33. Did an awesome conversation with her and Matt Hay back in May, where we talked all about living through a pandemic that’s full of Zoom calls and screens when you have hearing loss. And I just think that it’s really interesting to hear both you and Matt’s perspectives on what that’s like. I think it’s something that a lot of people should be well aware of, is that there are a lot of obstacles that those world full of screens pertain. And I thought you guys really did a great job of shedding a light on what that’s like for you. And then also some of the different ways that we can all be aligned in terms of advocacy and work to make it more inclusive, more or less. So, it’s great to have you back on. Just wanted to get a sense from you as we head into the new year. What are the things that are top of mind for you that gets you excited about 2021?
Shari Eberts:
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much for having me back. It was a lot of fun to talk with you and Matt. I really enjoyed it. And as you know, 2020 was just a tough year in general. So I think we’re all happy to be moving forward, especially people with hearing loss who suffer from isolation during normal times. So the pandemic was definitely an issue, but there were a lot of silver linings. And I think, like you mentioned, especially on the advocacy front. And there really did seem to be more of a focus on accessibility for people with hearing loss. I think the pandemic highlighted a lot of the challenges that we faced and there were definitely interest in news coverage. And so that’s definitely a positive.
Shari Eberts:
The first thing was really on just the face masks and really highlighting the difficulty in terms of communicating for people with hearing loss because of that and how it takes away our super power, which is the lip reading basically. And clear mask can help with that. And it’s been exciting to see that being embraced by different companies and new technologies heading into 2021. And of course, video conference calls, which really, basically took over all of the corrections in 2020.
Shari Eberts:
And at the beginning of the pandemic, I started a petition asking the different video conference companies to make their ASR or their automatic speech recognition captions free for people with hearing loss, to help us stay connected or in the difficult times. And pretty quickly, Google and Microsoft came out and made their excellent captions free for everybody. And really Zoom has been the one that lags behind. And I know we spoke back in May, the petition, I think got about 35,000 signatures and right now we’re up to about 67,000.
Dave Kemp:
Wow.
Shari Eberts:
Still climbing. So you can see it’s still a huge, huge issue for people with hearing loss. And captions, the way I think about it and the way I think a lot of people are starting to think about, is captions are our ramps. You would never build a building and have ramps there and then ask wheelchair users to pay in order to access those ramps. And it’s the exact same thing with captions. We need them to stay involved and to communicate on video conference calls. And there’s no reason why we should pay for the accessible features that we need.
Dave Kemp:
Yeah. I totally agree with that. I was just going to say, I think that it’s, first of all, it’s so cool that this podcast has allowed for me to really get to know you and just what an amazing impact you’re having on. I mean, the fact that you’ve been able to generate 67,000 signups and signatures, it’s just unbelievable the amount of awareness that you’re generating here. And I totally agree. I think that this is, I think a little bit of a learning curve as a society right now that we’re going through where it needs to be recognized to your point, that for, just like you use the analogy of wheelchair ramps, captions are essential to a large contingent of people. And in a world that’s so dominated with Zoom and all of these different video conferencing, meetings, it just makes so much sense to me. And I just think it’s so cool that you’re spearheading that front. So, wanted to say that, but go on.
Shari Eberts:
Well, I appreciate that. And I appreciate you. And really a lot of people in the hearing health press have helped to get the word out about the petition. I know hearing tracker and find hearing and hearing review, and I just really appreciate how the whole industry honestly has come together in support of this, on the technology side, on the audiologists front. The Hearing Journal published an editorial about it. So it’s just been inspiring to me to really see how the whole industry has come together to support people in this time. And I expect that is going to continue-
Dave Kemp:
For sure.
Shari Eberts:
[inaudible 00:14:14]. Because we need to keep the pressure on. I mean, the good news is that Zoom does seem to be quietly rolling out the ASR captions to it’s lowest cost plan. So it’s pro plan and it looks like they’re expanding the beta test a little bit. But the fact is that, it should be free for everyone. And so we need to really just keep our foot on the pedal to keep this going.
Dave Kemp:
Yeah, I totally agree. Well, those are really two really great points. And I agree. I think that this idea of just being a little bit more inclusive and thoughtful about all this, and figuring out ways that you can support these groups that I think really need our support right now. So I fully agree with everything you’re saying there. Anything else that is on your mind as we head into the new year.
Shari Eberts:
The only other thing I would say is that the exciting thing for me about innovations in terms of accessibility is that once they’re there, they can’t be rolled back. So I do like the progress that we’ve made in 2020. We can only move forward with that. And so that’s very exciting.
Dave Kemp:
Yeah. It’s like we, it took a pandemic for maybe the world of video conferencing to become standardized with captions. And I guess that is a little bit of a silver lining, is that three years from now, four years ago or four years from now, hopefully when all of it just becomes truly universal and standardized in there, everything is captioned. We’ll look back and we’ll say that, “Well, that’s a big reason why was because when we were living on Zoom for a whole year, it just became so obvious that it was something that we needed.” So I love it. I think these are really great points and I agree with you. I think these are things to be excited about as we move into the future.
Shari Eberts:
Awesome.
Dave Kemp:
Cool, Shari. Well, thank you so much. Thanks for coming on the podcast this year and we’ll definitely have to have you on again in 2021.
Shari Eberts:
Sounds great. Thanks Dave.
Dave Kemp:
Okay. So we got Carl Thomas. Carl has been on the podcast a few times this year. He and I just did an awesome episode with Nick Hahn not long ago. So be sure to go check that one out as that was probably one of the most enlightening episodes from the man who coined the term hearables himself. So that was a lot of fun, Carl and I doing that one together. But wanted to bring Carl on as somebody that’s been working in the, really the wearable space and specifically with hearables for quite some time. I’m curious, Carl, what are the things that get you really excited as we head into 2021?
Carl Thomas:
Well, first off, Dave, thanks again for having me back. I really appreciate the time and the ability to chat with yourself and obviously your people that are listening. I think from [inaudible 00:17:04] to being in the hearable space, the one thing that’s been really interesting over the last few years is just the number of different hearables, headphones [inaudible 00:17:14] stereo, but everybody started coming to market that have a range of sensors in them, because ultimately that provides so many different benefits to the consumer. But also as well, the more people are starting to look at the category, the more people are starting to realize the scalability of what can be provided, the different types of functions, the different types of features.
Carl Thomas:
And that obviously goes hand in hand with the amount of content that is now available for headphones, broadly speaking,. We know that over the last five years, stream music has completely blown up to be the main engineer group within the recording industry. We know that podcasts have just exploded. We know that audio books have exploded. So if we’re having the ability to listen to more content when we’re out and about, whilst also more content is available, there’s a part of me that is now thinking, okay, well, with the rise of consumer devices on the airs that understand us, understand context, this content is going to start to become a lot more dynamic, a lot more adaptive to that context.
Carl Thomas:
And I’ve been talking about audio as a service for a while in terms of audio having a specific job to be done in a very narrow context. And I think with an understanding and appreciation of our physiology from either wearables or hearables that have some form of insight into our biometrics and also situational context, there’s going to be a real rise in content, which is really designed to either be reactive or designed for specific environments, for contextually aware audio listening.
Dave Kemp:
No, I think that’s fascinating. I mean, just the thought of where do we go now that you’re starting to see the embedding of the sensors? Clearly there’s one side of it that’s on gathering the information from a biometric, like preventative health standpoint, but there’s I think a lot to what you’re saying around what kind of contextual clues are we more or less transmitting with these and what does that then do to the content that can be overlaid on top of it?
Dave Kemp:
I think like Spotify, there’s a lot of different things that are going on in my mind right now as it relates to, does this impact the music recommendations that you get or the spoken audio? It’s you’ve been … maybe it’s understanding that I’ve been listening to a lot of different podcasts about a specific topic and then it’s surfacing that content based on the parts that maybe it’s registering my emotional behavior. Like I’m getting excited about this and so it’s recognizing it. There’s just a lot of different directions that this could go.
Carl Thomas:
Absolutely, yeah. I think there’s a lot of heritage here as well. So obviously this year we had the release of [Morris bot 00:19:57], which is providing contextually relevant audio information about our fiscal environment that we’re in no time. But going back to, I think is 2014, the guy who started Last.fm, Michael Breidenbruecker, specifically created RjDj. And that was taken and just loads of input from the sensors on your smartphone to provide an always dynamic soundscape to you going out in environments and stuff like that. It’s incredibly compelling. But now we’re moving into a space whereby it’s having real tangible benefits. So you can start to imagine stuff like Calm and Headspace provided meditation for you when it recognizes specific biometrics, more recognizes that you’re-
Dave Kemp:
For sure.
Carl Thomas:
Stressed. There’s obviously a platform like Active, who’re providing a range of different audio workouts. And then now it’s starting to do a partnership with Apple whereby based on your physiology, that’s gleaned from your Apple Watch, it can start to be adapted to your heart rate. So there’s so many examples of where audio can be relevant to us physiologically and provide that tangible benefit. And I think that’s going to really scale into so many different types of use cases across 2021 and 2022, especially.
Dave Kemp:
Yeah. No, I think that’s a fascinating use case about Calm, because I think that I’ve had conversations on the podcast. Like I did one with Brett Bivens not long ago, where we talked about this idea of the ambient ladder and this idea where it starts with music and the next rung has been a lot of spoken audio. So you have podcasts. And now we’re seeing new forms of podcast emerge, but I totally think that we’re going to have this whole ambient internet of things like Calm, Headspace, where, to your point, the way that that might all be manifested is that you have it so that it’s a function on your AirPods or whatever type of device that you’re wearing.
Dave Kemp:
It registers that you might be agitated or something’s going on. And it’s just giving you a prompt to say, “Would you like to engage in a five minute meditation?” Or something like that. That’s where I think this gets fascinating, is that the clues that your biometrics and your physiology are transmitting and being captured, can then be converted into actionable items. And I think there’s a lot of different things that get interesting when you start to think about it that way.
Carl Thomas:
Exactly. And I think when you start to look at the broader context in which that sits in, the fact that we’re all now, I say all the vast majority of us are working from home, especially schools aren’t open, healthcare and the lack of ability to go and see doctors, see clinicians, it’s we’re living in the space whereby we need to start to have systems that are able to monitor us and provide us with some form of insight or some form of tool to really help us better our health or better our mental wellness. And I think audio, I mean, we read a stat back in 2019. I think it was based on a World Health Organization white paper, which basically said that at the time 67% of millennials were using some form of music to overcome anxiety and depression.
Carl Thomas:
Now, obviously music wasn’t developed and created for that specific role, but at the same time, it suggests that if it was or if audio was created for a specific world and if audio or the systems that we use could understand the underlying challenges that we’re going through, then obviously that audio would be a lot more impactful in a specific use case. So, yeah, I’m just very bullish on the fact that we could now be moving into a stage whereby audio really does act as a tangible way in overcoming certain challenges or even a tangible mechanism in certain use cases to really provide real true value.
Dave Kemp:
Yeah. And that’s why I think this idea that it is this parallel sense. You can do things in a way that you can’t with video, where video, it dominates your entire attention. You need to focus on it. You can’t drive and look and watch a video or else you shouldn’t be doing that. But with audio, you can be doing things and have it be in the background. And that’s why I think it, on the surface, that’s interesting. But when you really think about that, it opens up ways that you can engage in content, ways that you never really could with just your phone, because it assumes that you basically have part of your processing power in your brain that can be allocated to something like this. And I just think that circumstantially, it becomes something where it’s just more feasible more times than not, and it’s not something that just demands you to stop everything and turn all your attention this way.
Dave Kemp:
And so that’s where I think things are going to get really interesting when really the audio internet explodes the way that I think it is. I think that the precursor was you needed to get the internet enabled more or less with outfitting everybody with these kinds of devices and having that behavior shift that we’ve seen over the last few years with AirPods most notably. And now it’s like, “Okay, what comes next?” And like you mentioned, Morris bot is a really, really good example of operating on that assumption, where you might have a lot of different UGC that’s been created in high density areas.
Dave Kemp:
Like I used to live in Chicago, but I got all kinds of friends that live there and we’re all dropping our own UGC. And I can hear your recommendation when I walked by a restaurant, that’s actually really intriguing. That’s a compelling … But again, it’s not something where I’m not sure if I’d want to be notified on my phone with a lot of alerts to say these kinds of things. It’s because these things are already in my ears and it’s operating on the assumption that it’s just like, “Here’s just a little bit of tidbit of information.” I just think that’s a subtle thing to point out, but I think it’s a really important thing to point out about why audio is so different.
Carl Thomas:
Exactly. And I think that combined with the proliferation of audio assistance as well, where they can [inaudible 00:26:21] that filter to what’s actually relevant to us, again, that makes the whole audible experience so much more compelling because we’re walking past a specific retailer, we’re walking past a specific restaurant that we have transacted with previously or that we have a relationship with. Then it makes whatever notification a lot more compelling to us to actually access that at that moment in time. And I think, yeah, just we’ve obviously gone through the rise of audio over the last five years and there’s parallels around broadly speaking, the information that we went through in the noughties, early 20s, so we say.
Carl Thomas:
And I think now about moving in the same way that we have from the information age, into the age of context, what do I want to hear at this moment in time? What’s going to benefit me at this moment in time? How are the juice that while using the sensors that are on the device and buried in my ears. And obviously we know from a lot of the lightens that Nick Hahn has done and obviously all the great experts that the air is a great physiological payments [inaudible 00:27:23]. So it’s now about that relevance for me personally.
Dave Kemp:
Yeah. No, I love that. The age of context, I think that’s such a well said statement because I do, I think you’re right. I think that it’s one thing to capture a lot of this information now. I think the next stage is making sense of it in a way that’s highly personalized on a per user basis.
Carl Thomas:
Absolutely.
Dave Kemp:
All right, cool. Awesome, Carl. Thanks so much for joining me here today and for all the times that you were on the podcast this year. I always enjoy our conversations and I definitely look forward to doing a few more next year in 2021.
Carl Thomas:
Thanks again, Dave, for having me. And yeah, happy new year to everyone else and happy 2021 when it comes.
Dave Kemp:
Happy 2021. Cheers. All right. Ryan Kraudel, welcome back to the podcast. Had you on a number of times this year. We had a great time talking about biometric sensors, preventative health, wearables as early detection systems too, pandemics and other health crisises. So, great to have you back on. Curious to get your take, as we head into 2021, what’s on your mind? What are the things that are getting you excited as it relates to your field of expertise in the things you’re passionate about?
Ryan Kraudel:
Well, Dave, first and foremost, thanks for having me back. It’s always good to talk to you again. And yeah, there’s a lot of exciting things for 2021. So I’ll try to keep it relatively short and keep it relatively concise. But I think a good summary of what I’m most excited about is this notion of these consumer medical solutions. And that the dichotomy of consumer and medical is, those words are chosen purposefully because you don’t typically think of those, or you think of those as two separate categories. But what we’re seeing, and you’re starting to see early signs of this even in the past few years, but in particular this year, where there’s this convergence going on between consumer wearables and hearable devices and true health and medical devices.
Ryan Kraudel:
And those two categories of devices and solutions are rapidly converging. And it’s really coming from two different angles. One is more from the device side where a lot of these consumer hearables and wearables are moving towards becoming at a minimum personal health devices, if not outright medical devices. And what you’re seeing is more and more of these consumer wearables and hearables getting regulatory clearance for medical applications, with things like atrial fib detection. And that’s things like the Apple Watch and Samsung and Fitbit now have that capability as well. And you’re also starting to see things like AliveCor, that is coming from more of a medical background moving into that space as well in a bigger and broader way.
Ryan Kraudel:
And the hearing health is a good example of that as well, where the hearing health companies are recognizing this and putting more features in those devices that are traditionally considered wearable capabilities, like activity tracking and voice assistance and biometrics of course, and a lot of the things that you talk about regularly, Dave. So the device angle is one of it, but then also there’s a bunch of companies coming at this from a services angle as well. And this is more of where you’re seeing a lot more, what I would refer to as business model innovation, as much as technical innovation. Of course, there’s technology involved. And I’m speaking more specifically about companies like Livongo and Omada Health and DarrioHealth.
Ryan Kraudel:
And a lot of these, most of them targeted towards chronic disease, but started going direct to consumer and building out a direct relationships with those consumers to be able to establish the efficacy of their solutions. And now you’re starting to see them get payers involved and become part of payer networks and get involved in broader distribution networks. And that’s where I think you’re going to start to see those areas continue to converge from a device standpoint and from a services and a solution standpoint, where you’ll see those companies continue to focus on regulatory clearance, demonstrated efficacy of the technology and the service involved. And ultimately, putting the consumers and the patients more in control of their health and their wellness and their fitness and helping them ultimately live longer and healthier lives.
Dave Kemp:
Yeah. I love all that. I mean, going off of the consumer medical point that you made, the first thing that comes to my mind is, with the pandemic, it just keeps getting, I think, put on display that these biometric sensors and this ability to better understand what our physiology is telling us is just like there’s a lot of really interesting things that can be done with that. The first thing that comes to mind is what WHOOP has consistently been displaying all throughout the pandemic, is a lot of the time before you even can test positive for COVID, your respiratory rate will spike. And so these are these like precursor, these preliminary things.
Dave Kemp:
And I just think what’s fascinating, you talk about the Apple Watch too and how people, these detections of AFib and abnormalities with all these things, it just strikes me as we’re in this super early onset of what’s going to be, I think, a massive trend throughout the 2020s, which is preventative health, right? It’s like this whole notion that these consumer wearables that people wear largely for the consumer applications, whether it be Apple Watch and it just be your everyday watch or WHOOP, where you’re using it as a training ban to live a healthier life, they double as these notification systems of there abnormalities going on. I know that in a lot of the conversations we’ve had, we’re probably going to see that migrate up into the ear as well.
Dave Kemp:
And so you’re going to be … I think that we’ll have these devices that we’re all going to be wearing largely for consumer purposes that serve as a dual medical preventative guardian use case for a myriad of different things that they’re capturing. And a lot of that I think is going to be tied to the data science. We’ve had a lot of really good conversations around that, about the machine learning advances in terms of what you can assess from all of this data. And that to me is another really exciting aspect as it relates to biometric monitoring. And sensors in general, is the actual science that’s layered on top of it. And these algorithms that we’re going to be able to make sense of all of this data that’s being captured.
Ryan Kraudel:
Yeah. There’s a ton going on there like that. And there’s a bunch to unpack there. So, first and foremost, you’re right, that these devices are becoming early warning systems, if you will, for a variety of different indications, both acute indications as well as chronic conditions as well. And from a device standpoint, I think you’re going to start to see a proliferation of this user experience similar to, I guess the most common example of it is the Apple Watch and the Afib, where the PPG sensor is continually monitoring for irregular heart rates and irregular heart rhythms. And what it does, it surfaces a notification to say, “Hey, you should take an ECG reading because we see something abnormal here.”
Ryan Kraudel:
So you’re going to start to see that use case play out in different disease states, different conditions that where the wearable is providing real time monitoring. Maybe not at the same level of acuity that a medical device could, but it can at least identify irregular patterns that trigger you to go get a more advanced test or go to your doctor or take an ECG reading, whatever it might be. And so you’re going to start to see that play out in different areas. I’ll give you a great example of something we’re working on quite a bit is in the hypertension space. So the ability to measure blood pressure purely with a PPG sensor in devices that people wear every day, whether it’s in a set of earbuds or a hearing aid or in a watch.
Ryan Kraudel:
And that can provide an early warning signal of a hypertensive, either hypertensive stress acutely or more chronic patterns of hypertension, which again, can trigger alerts and help people go talk to their doctor, go get a cuff reading, whatever they advises to alleviate that particular issue. You’re going to start to see that play out a lot more in these consumer medical devices. The other area that’s worth touching on is, as you mentioned, Dave, is what’s going on at the ear is a microcosm of this broader level convergence of consumer and medical devices where-
Dave Kemp:
For sure. Yeah.
Ryan Kraudel:
You’ve got the consumer audio and earbud companies starting to add more and more hearing augmentation capabilities and active noise cancellation and being able to tune the sound and the audio as it comes in based on an individual’s personal hearing capabilities. And of course, that’s features and functionality that’s long been a part of hearing health devices and hearing aids. But from the other side, from the hearing aid and hearing health side, you’ve got those companies, as I mentioned before, adding traditional wearable devices for, or wearable capabilities, I should say, for things like activity tracking and biometrics and voice assistance and that kind of stuff. And so you’ve got this overlap, or sort of a Venn diagram that’s getting closer and closer together, more and more overlap, and there’s more and more in the middle, if you will, between those hearing health devices and the consumer audio devices.
Dave Kemp:
I think you said it really, really well there, it’s this meeting in the middle of consumer and medical. So, Ryan, awesome to have you on all the different times this year. It’s been a lot of fun. Thanks for coming on today. And let’s definitely catch up a number of times in 2021 as well.
Ryan Kraudel:
Sounds great. Thanks Dave.
Dave Kemp:
Brielle Nickoloff, thank you so much for joining me here on the end of the year podcast episode. Last time we spoke was episode 15 of the podcast, a really awesome conversation. We talked a lot about the various tools that are used to create a lot of these different voice experiences. Back then, I think you were still with Lingo and now you’re with Botmock. So wanted to bring you on and just get your take, what are you excited about as we head into 2021, as it relates to your expertise, your interests, the things that you’re really passionate about?
Brielle Nickoloff:
Thanks Dave. Thanks for having me on. I am really excited about all of the effort and energy right now that is around the growing field of conversation design, whether that is voice chat. There is just an amazing rallying around, giving designers their due diligence and the amount of credit that they deserve for creating these incredible experiences. The field is just going to keep expanding and now we’re starting to see a bit more of a codified system of what we call ourselves as conversation designers, how recruiters find us, how you can actually look for jobs. And with Hillary Black’s new website that launched yesterday, I believe, conversation design jobs.com, we’re just seeing so much progress around this, which is amazing. It’s amazing because it is finally giving a place for artists and writers and liberal arts people to find our place.
Brielle Nickoloff:
And if you don’t have necessarily an artistic eye, and you do have a way with words and you have a way with really thinking about systems, whether that’s a voice system or a chat system, you now have a place to really excel and use your skills. So at Botmock, more and more enterprise teams are coming to us. And we’ve really seen a bit of a shift over this year that I think will keep happening next year, which is they’re coming to us and they’re saying, “Hey, a couple of years ago, our whole chatbot was designed and maintained by this one person. Now we have a product manager, we have researchers, we have developers and designers all working on this and we’re treating it the way it needs to be treated, which is as a real product.”
Brielle Nickoloff:
So, lots of them are telling us, “Hey, we’re hiring a new conversation designer next week. Can we get a Botmock demo session for them as well?” And I just think it’s amazing how people are really flocking to this field, especially, it’s so cool to see the voice field grow and there’s audio files and film people and script writers, and just an amazing gathering of different backgrounds and skillsets to help this field progress altogether.
Dave Kemp:
Yeah. I mean, I think that has been one of the coolest and really honestly, most surprising things since I’ve been dabbling in this space and coming around and meeting all these people, is I initially thought that it was going to be very, very techie. And there is a tech element to it. You have a lot of developers, highly technical engineers, people with those backgrounds, but what I didn’t expect when I first started to come around back in 2017 or so, was that this was a home for a lot of liberal arts, type minded people too. And I love that. I love that we’re seeing this field really open up into, if you’re a liberal arts major that has a real passion for storytelling or you’re a linguist like yourself, I just find one of the things that really is so magnetic about the voice industry is that it is so broadly appealing to different backgrounds.
Dave Kemp:
And because you have that really diverse minded groups of people, both technical and also highly creative, from the art sides of things, I just love the marriage of the two. And to your point, that I think it’s been so cool to see over this last year in particular, the design side really formalize in a concrete way. Like you said, you now have a really clear understanding of the delineations between what a conversational designer does, what those expectations are. I just think that it’s a testament to this whole space really growing up.
Dave Kemp:
It’s like each year, while it might not seem on the surface or from the consumer standpoint that there’s a ton of progress being made, clearly in the background, there’s so much that’s happening that’s laying the foundation for this whole space to take off in a meaningful way for a long time. And I feel like this year in particular has been probably the most significant progress being made in terms of the things that are happening in the background in that foundation that’s really being established right now.
Brielle Nickoloff:
I totally agree. And to your point about the design process, that comes before the development finally being brought out into the light. It’s amazing to see. And it’s amazing to see teams, I would say more than half maybe, more than half of the teams that use Botmock don’t even necessarily need the developer handover to be that robust. They’re coming to our tool saying, our designers, they don’t want to be having to go think in dialogue flow terms anymore. They don’t want to have to work within those technical tools. They need a tool like Botmock where they can visually figure things out. And then our developers, they know that they’re going to put in some work around deploying it. So in terms of, we’re not a complete build tool, but we’re seeing teams want a tool just for that design process. And then we’re seeing teams also, the same team use other tools just for the technical deployment.
Dave Kemp:
Yeah. I love it. I think it’s like this, the two sides, the developers and the designers I think are, they’ve, are realizing the way in which they work in tandem. And I just think that’s such a, again, such a testament to where we are with this, is that the technology is so new. It’s not like this is some sort of iteration to, like the mobile web was to the previous web. This is like a whole new internet in many different ways. And so, of course, it’s going to take a while for us to even figure out how do we go about building this thing out?
Dave Kemp:
And it just, from almost an outsider’s perspective in my view, I look at where it’s at today and it’s nine day in terms of just the general understanding of what needs to be done in order to bring these things to market. What kinds of roles need to be played by these different players that are working behind the scenes? So I think that that gives me a lot of enthusiasm and optimism about what’s to come because it just feels like things are really starting to solidify.
Brielle Nickoloff:
Me too, Dave, I think you really summed it up there perfectly.
Dave Kemp:
Awesome. Well, thanks Brielle. Thank you so much for joining. I look forward to chatting again here in 2021.
Brielle Nickoloff:
Me too. Thank you Dave.
Dave Kemp:
Okay. So we got Scot and Susan Westwater on here. My favorite married couple that have joined me on the podcast. Episode eight, you joined me when you guys were launching your first book. Congrats on the announcement that you’re going to be writing a second book. I guess that’s congrats. Although, that might be a little daunting right now in the stage that you’re at. But nonetheless, I’ve always really appreciated you guys’ perspective on the voice landscape. I think with pragmatic digital, you have one of the most well-grounded ways of thinking about voice, how it can be applied in the enterprise. Like what are going to be the use cases that are actually attractive to businesses? How can you build a business around creating voice experiences for other businesses? So I’ve always found your take to be really fascinating and I wanted to get you on here to get a sense from you, what did you learn in 2020 and how are you going to apply some of these things into 2021? Like what are the things that you’re looking forward to heading into next year?
Scot Westwater:
Well, first off, thanks for having us back on. We really appreciate it, Dave. And thank you for the kind words on the book and all the stuff that we’ve been working on.
Dave Kemp:
Absolutely.
Scot Westwater:
It’s been a really interesting year. I mean, obviously we started out really excited. I mean, one of the first slides in our presentation in Chattanooga, was, “This is going to be the year of voice, in 2020. Consumer adoption and rah rah, rah.” And none of us could have foreseen the pandemic and all the implications that that would have.
Dave Kemp:
Right.
Scot Westwater:
I will say despite all of the trials and tribulations that we’ve seen globally as a community, there are a lot of silver linings and there’s a lot of positive that’s actually come out of 2020. We were talking a little bit before we started recording, and one of the things that’s actually been super interesting are the conversations that we’ve been having with brands and enterprises have actually completely changed. There are a lot more mature conversations and it’s less on the education side and more about how can I implement voice within my enterprise, at whatever point that makes sense. And so if nothing else, the larger organizations are investing. [inaudible 00:49:56] been pretty large-scale projects towards the end of this year. But again, the conversations have progressed quite a bit from where we were, even at the end of last year. So, I think for all of us in the voice community, that’s really a good indicator of what 21, 22 and 23 and beyond, could be looking like.
Susan Westwater:
Yeah. And I would say from a brass tacks perspective, I think the things that I’m excited about for 2021 is seeing the continued integration of voice into brands. We’re starting to see, even with it being the holidays, I’m seeing all these iRumba commercials, where they’re starting to tell that it has a voice enablement. That enablement has been there for a while, but the fact that they’re now putting that in a demonstrating, it is showing that with, as much as I hate to give major TV all the credit, when you start seeing that integrated into super expensive ad spends, that’s an important thing to take notice of. And I think that that’s what I’m looking forward to in 2021, is helping those brands. And as brands start to figure out where [inaudible 00:50:57] as opposed to, how do I fit into voice or what do I make with voice, it’s where does voice fit? And then start to work within my own existing brand. Like my customer experience, where does that make sense?
Susan Westwater:
And I think that’s an exciting part and that’s where then voice search is going to be important. Looking at your existing mobile app, it isn’t just going to be the speakers, it’s going to be how do I make that work across everything? And so therefore when we see what the implementations look like, that’s also going to be really thoughtful and creative as we try to figure out how do I make that consistent from app to speaker, to possibly even website? And so that’s going to have a whole different group. I think Sonic branding is going to take off even more than we’ve seen it. Thinking about how those well-known spokes voices are for brands, those are, again, there’s going to be considerations and I think the creative executions are going to be something exciting to look at too.
Dave Kemp:
Yeah. I think the, you mentioned Sonic branding and this idea of having a spokesperson, before we started recording, we were talking a little bit about just customizing the assistant. And for each different brand not using a default and having that identity, I think that that was something that initially people were maybe 50-50 on. You could maybe make an argument for why it makes sense to just use the default. I have everything just sound uniform across whatever brand. And I think now in hindsight, it’s really obvious that you want to be able to stand out in people’s mind and whether that’s through a combination of the Sonic branding, but also with using a designated spokesperson and doing voiceovers.
Dave Kemp:
Again, these are the things that are happening right now in the voice space, that they’re really iterative, but they’re such a testament of the formative stage that this technology is in. It’s going to be the things that are standard and we’ll look back on down the line, as, of course, it’s the way that it is now and never even think that it was at one point debated as to what it would be. But I do think that this idea of having multiple voice assistance for all kinds of different brands and having that brand, like what does Nike’s voice assistant look like? And what does it sound like? It’s probably something that’s tied to its overarching brand. And that’s really exciting to me, is that it becomes something, from a consumer standpoint, I think just more engaging.
Dave Kemp:
And then from a brand standpoint, it becomes a new channel that you can manifest your brand in, in a different way. And those are going to be the kinds of things that I think get more and more brands on board with this idea of manifesting it and having that extension into this new channel. And like you said, there’s a lot of reasons for these big companies to be thinking heavily about the voice space right now, particularly around voice search, voice SEO. So I think by using some of these different mechanisms as an overall message to say, “Voice is really important,” is going to just pay dividends down the line.
Scot Westwater:
Yeah. We had a couple of projects this year that we worked with Sixième Son, who is the world’s largest Sonic branding agency out of Paris. And there’s one situation where we created their skill and action. And because of the voice that we chose, who happened to be one of their employees, was close to Alexa. We started seeing people getting lost within the experience so thinking they were talking to Alexa. And so there wasn’t enough of a Sonic differentiation between the voice we were working with and the default voice. So we ended up adding a lot of audio cues to make it very clear that [inaudible 00:54:59] branded experience versus the traditional Alexa experience.
Scot Westwater:
And then we also have an example with the Open Voice Network where, again, Sixième Son did the audio branding. And we actually have a demo where we have a default Polly voice. That’s a male Polly voice. And being that the Open Voice Network is an international organization and we wanted it to be welcoming, we chose a voice that actually had an international feel to it. So it’s a gentleman who also works at Sixième Son, but he actually has a French accent. And so he’s English. He speaks English as a second language, but has this awesome French accent. So we had international flavor to it, which is already a big difference between the default Polly voice and the voice performance.
Scot Westwater:
But then you layer in the ability to add that Sonic element to it and music, and really create that emotional tie. When you listen to all three examples, you’re like, of course, I would go with this, finished polished version. It sounds so much better. It’s so much better. And so it’s just one of those things that, because we’ve started to reach that level of maturity, because there’s new organizations and creatives that are coming into the space, we can create more robust experiences. We can enhance the creative by using all the different things that we have at our disposal.
Dave Kemp:
Yeah. No, I think that’s really interesting. I mean, that to me is, again, like I said, this, it just screams that we’re in this really infancy of this technology. I just always think back on the way the web was like in the early 90s and just how much innovation there was that just transpired one thing after another. And it just feels so much like we’re in those early web days where the foundation is being laid for something much bigger, but it takes a lot of thought into getting the details right in this stage so that you’re set up and this thing can grow on top of what it is today.
Susan Westwater:
Yeah. I think, we definitely have been focusing on making things work and making them, is it possible to do these things? Is it possible to do whatever? And now we’re getting to a point of how do I do that better? And that’s an exciting time, because we have, this is incredible technology. It’s taken a ton of work and now it’s to add that polish and that more robust feeling. So that way then people do feel trust. They do trust it, because it’s reliable, it’s richer and it’s more informative. And that way then it becomes a preference.
Dave Kemp:
Yes. I couldn’t agree more. Well, Scott and Susan, this has been great catching up with you and just getting a feel for what it is that you’re looking forward to. So thanks for joining me this year on the podcast and I look forward to chatting again in 2021.
Susan Westwater:
Sure. Thank you so much for having us on. And thanks again for all the kind words.
