How Switch Control Came to Be
I've been asked as part of an interview process to talk about a challenging experience as a founding engineer and how I overcame it. I feel like my family would be interested in this story and it certainly fits the tone of my blog which is half technical and half journal of my thoughts, so I thought I would answer this particular question here!
For those who don't know about Switch Control it is an assistive technology that allows you to use mobile devices with a Joystick or even only the ability to tap the screen. Mobile devices don't interact with keyboards in the same way that desktop/laptop computers do.
The Operating Systems in the space (iOS/Android) tend to only care about character input. Experienced computer users will be accustomed to the ability to hit Tab and move focus around... mobile devices lack this. And when it is supported, the navigation is very clumsy.
They've made improvements in that area in the past ten years, but trust me when I was working on Switch Control initially this capability was laughably unusable. So users who were unable to touch the small components on mobile screens were left out. The users that could utilize the social power that phones bring to improve their lives the most (think people confined to wheelchairs with severe physical impairments, but perfect minds) were left out.
EECS 481 - Sophomore Year (~2008)
So I pitched an Operating System to my 481 class. My pitch didn't land very well. Most of the class thought it was too complicated to finish in a semester. With hindsight I officially get to do one of these :P, however, I don't blame them. I didn't explain my development plan clearly, just my goals. And wouldn't you know it, the professor of the class wisely included advisors from other parts of the university and a Technical Director from Mott Children's Hospital was there and had a similar idea, but instead of Operating System he said: App. Good enough for me.
As we went through the process with Mott one thing frustrated me... the doctors were all obsessed with iPads. If you're familiar with developing for mobile platforms you know that Android is much more open with the capabilities it gives developers than Apple is. When we chose Apple we were putting ourselves in a pretty tight box. Namely, we could only develop a standalone application.
We would go on through that semester to build ASK Messaging (Assistive Scanning Keyboard... Messaging). This application would go on to garner a lot of interest, with recognition from a school for the disabled run by Neil Young and a Student of Di Vinci award from the Multiple Sclerosis foundation. Awesome recognition... but we lacked the most important thing... customers.
I had to make that a callout... the interview I'm engaged in asked for a problem and how I solved it. ☝️PROBLEM. Awesome application... no users.
Fatal Flaws
Our application had some fatal flaws. Flaw one was it only provided access to text and email. Picture yourself as a 12 - 18 year old, our stated market through our partnership with a children's hospital. In 2010 - 2020 if you weren't on Facebook you were left out of social circles. So our application didn't really solve the user's need. It didn't allow them to access social networking.
Second, it had to be turned on for the user. The only way users could use our applications was if they sat their with it open 24/7. Otherwise they had to ask an assistant to turn it on and once they've gone through that process they would prefer to simply have an assistant send a message on their behalf. Sadly such users had given up the idea of private conversations a long time ago.
Solution: EECS 493 Android
Jump ahead to the next semester and I'm a junior. So, I have a little more respect. I also have the benefit of articles like this beautiful article from the EECS department on us winning $100,000 in funding over the summer through our involvement with the University of Michigan Center for Entrepreneurship.
So when I entered my Senior Design Course, a year early, I had the respect and clout necessary to pitch my Operating System. So I pitched my Operating System and people listened. And when I told them we could do it, nobody argued.
We would go on throughout that semester to build an application that looked very similar to ASK Messaging, however it was a keyboard that you could utilize over the entire operating system. It replaced the Software Keyboard on the device with one that scans over options, just like modern implementations of Switch Control. This left us one last hurdle: how do we get users.
Opportunity Knocks: EECS 481 Round 2 - Custom ROM
After a very successful Senior Design project which saw essentially everyone on the team get an A on the project and in the course Professor Chesney, EECS 481 professor, would reach out and ask me to be a Teacher's Assistant for his course. This was the perfect opportunity to gain users! I happily accepted and in my spare time between semesters I would put the final touch on our path to customers: I would turn our application into a Custom Android ROM. For those not familiar with the Android Development world this is basically my own version of Android... much like Samsung can create their own version of Android.
The professor of this course was well intertwined with our entrepreneurial success in raising money and was more than happy to allow me to offer my Operating System to students in his course as a platform they could build for. Over half the class would take me up on the offer. By the end of the course my Switch Control based custom ROM would have 5 applications built specifically for it, including:
- Battleship
- Medical Record management
- A Multiple Sclerosis/disability centric Social Network
- An awesome indoor navigation application for the EECS building/conference centers.
- Another non-licensed game made up by the students that slightly resembled Rock Band and could double as a physical therapy tool
At the end of this semester we had what we needed. Happy customers. Many of them. Utilizing a Scanning Operating System to play Battleship and connect on Social Networks.
Exit Strategy - Convincing Google
As the ASK Interfaces team navigated the complexity of releasing our project for money we got discouraged. We essentially had two paths available to us:
- Be hardware manufacturers of an ecosystem that would exist outside of Google's App Store and charge customers an exorbitant amount per tablet.
- Convincing Google of the value of 3rd Party Assistive Technologies and giving our software away for the betterment of society.
Regarding option 1, throughout our experience with the disability world one thing became clear. Successful companies within the space were overcharging for their product. Not because they were trying to rip off their customers, but because it was just the reality of doing business in a niche market. Supply and Demand dictates that demand is low, but the people experiencing that demand have deep pockets. Either from a parent's willingness to provide their child a more normal life or in some cases the ability for insurance to determine the payout, which for Assistive Technologies is usually high.
As an engineer with a conscience I could not envision charging people $2,500 per tablet for an application that in all reality should be an included part of the Android experience. So I approached Google's Accessibility Team with our demo video, the videos of dozens of happy Mott patients at a successful 481 demo day, and they were sold. I spent an afternoon advising them on the API changes that would be required to allow Switch Control to exist as a 3rd party application and walked them through the important UX aspects of our code.
Today
Today Switch Control/Switch Access is a default installation on both iOS and Android. My involvement in that project and on the law making side, I also contributed to WCAG 2.1, puts me in the position to be a leader in the Accessibility industry. I am mostly a tech guy, but when Google and Apple have technical user experience concerns I am on the short list of people who get a call.
We didn't have the massive business success that the Center for Entrepreneurship would typically aim for. However, I'm more proud of the success of providing my Android Custom ROM for free to every Android/Apple user out there. It is the appropriate conclusion for an application that can bring people the ability to manage their bank account, interact on social networks and text messages, and even in the case of some of my friends who I stay in touch with... the ability to manage their own blog and bring in their own money.
Those friends and those stories are more valuable to me than any amount of money I could have made selling my own hardware.
Chris
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