The 250 Million Users Product Teams Ignore | Rebecca Rosenberg

Vit Lyoshin (00:01.026)
Welcome Rebecca. Thank you for your time today.

Rebecca Rosenberg (00:04.558)
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.

Vit Lyoshin (00:07.286)
Yeah, of course. the question I wanna start with is many product teams working on apps and products, but sometimes sometimes they fail to get adoption as much as they can. from what exp from your experience, what do you think are some of the reasons for that?

Rebecca Rosenberg (00:29.752)
Yeah, I think that there are a lot of reasons why somebody might struggle with adoption of their technology. And I think specifics really will depend on the industry that you're in and and what it is that you're developing. But I think oftentimes the biggest issue when we're not seeing something be adopted is that we are either we have you know, either built for the wrong user or we are marketing to the wrong.

user. And so whether it's that we really just don't have enough of an understanding of the market that we're going after. And so whether that's, hey, you know, you really should have done significantly more user interviews to actually really understand the problem and making sure that you're building something that addresses that problem, or taking what you've built and trying to figure out who the right market for your technology is.

I think are ways to help kind of overcome that a little bit. you know, other reasons why I think things potentially aren't adopted could just be that they they don't work as intended or they don't work as described, or they're full of bugs or issues that make it difficult for somebody to actually engage with the tool. and so I think there are a number of reasons why that can happen, but

really just talking to people and and getting whatever it is that you've built in front of users as quickly as possible, in as beta a version as possible is one of the best ways to overcome that and make sure that there is kind of that those beginnings of product market fit as you're developing and then launching.

Vit Lyoshin (02:12.126)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, those conversations with users are very important. And th there is also kind of an idea that people don't really even say what they want or like cannot even express themselves very well. and then also there is a challenge of of like building products that people cannot live without.

And and maybe maybe you have some sort of insight on like what's the difference and how to break through that and and really what makes product that people cannot live without.

Rebecca Rosenberg (02:46.06)
Yeah, I I think it really comes back to kind of the same thing. It's are we building something that truly solves a problem? And is that problem meaningful enough to the end user that they can see themselves thinking of your product and using it every day? And so

I think it comes back to are we talking to users? Are we getting what we've built in front of them? Because I think you're right, there absolutely is situations where, you know, the the end user doesn't necessarily know entirely what what they want, but the focus of those interviews you often want to be on what is the problem? tell me more about the problem, tell me how you're addressing the problem now, tell me your understanding of the problem, how it affects your life.

And then you as the innovator can kind of take that information back, build something you believe can begin to solve that problem, and then very quickly deploying it to an audience, letting people have an opportunity to try it out, test it out, and then iteratively provide that feedback back to you. I think you you very quickly will know whether you have or have not found something that really solves a problem for people and

When you solve a real problem for people is when you will see that that adoption curve associated with having built something people love.

Vit Lyoshin (04:11.276)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's great. so I wanna start with your story here now. I which I find really fascinating and inspiring. So can you tell us a little bit about like what you build in, who your users, like what inspired you to even start all this? Because I think it's a great story.

Rebecca Rosenberg (04:32.715)
Yeah, absolutely. so my name is Rebecca. I started Roboca out of my dorm room in college. we build us accessibility tools for people with low vision specifically. and the reason for that is because I have low vision as a result of albinism, which is a rare genetic condition. And really I experienced throughout my entire life a lack of appropriate assistive technologies and accessibility tools for people like me.

Vit Lyoshin (04:37.57)
Mm-hmm.

Vit Lyoshin (04:46.22)
Mm-hmm.

Rebecca Rosenberg (05:00.759)
And what I mean when I say that is that about 85 to 90% of blind and low vision people actually retain some amount of usable sight. But often when we're thinking about accessibility for this population, we're thinking about audio only options or tactile only options. The fact of the matter is that when you have some amount of good usable sight, you usually are wanting to use that. It's usually how your brain is best set up to interact and engage with the world.

And so what we were really missing was a visual first accessibility tool for people with vision impairments. And so that was what we built at Roboca. you know, as the story goes, I really built something that I wanted for me, and it very quickly became clear that other people liked it. and that sort of led to the continued development and the expansion of the tool and the technology and the company. But fundamentally what it is is an augmented reality smartphone app.

That lets you adjust in real time through a camera feed from your device kind of onto your phone, things like contrast and brightness and colors all in real time. We can do AI descriptions, we can do all sorts of different inversion filters so that somebody can really customize the visual experience that they're having to their needs in that particular moment. And so we've really we've

Vit Lyoshin (06:01.997)
Mm-hmm.

Rebecca Rosenberg (06:22.445)
Seen quite a bit of adoption of the technology. We've got users in about 115 countries internationally, and then yeah, sort of adjusted our our business model midway through to start working with organizational partners. And so we work with organizations that are cultural organizations, so museums use aquariums, we work in aviation with airports, and we also work in professional sports to basically make the technology available in those spaces and those organizational partners

Vit Lyoshin (06:29.03)
wow.

Vit Lyoshin (06:37.058)
Mm-hmm.

Rebecca Rosenberg (06:51.563)
basically sponsor the availability of the technology in their space so that anybody who is an individual can use the full extent of Robocus technology for free while they're there. And we do that with about twenty, yeah, about twenty organizations in the US right now.

Vit Lyoshin (07:02.968)
So how

Vit Lyoshin (07:07.936)
Yeah, okay, great. so how does it work with with the organizational people get like a subscription for an app or are they having some sort of other device that they have to use for the like a game, for example?

Rebecca Rosenberg (07:09.877)
Yeah.

Rebecca Rosenberg (07:21.429)
Yeah, so it's a really, really seamless experience for the end user. It's been really wonderful. The way that this works is that we use geofencing. And so what we do is we have an internal system that allows us to automatically geofence our partner sites and do so remotely without having to install any sort of hardware in their space or even really interact with their IT infrastructure, which they love. And so we're really just building a digital geographic boundary around these sites.

Vit Lyoshin (07:31.981)
Mm-hmm.

Rebecca Rosenberg (07:50.102)
And then when an end user who has the free basic version of RoboCa their device, when they enter into one of those geofense spaces, your device obviously knows where it is, and it will automatically give you access to basically the enterprise version of Roboca, the full extent of the technology that includes the AI features, that includes a lot of the additional inversion filters, that includes some other capabilities like upload and download, so that people can have a really full visual experience.

in these spaces where historically you either really want to have a full visual experience in the case of a museum or a sporting event, or really need to have a full visual experience in the case of an airport.

Vit Lyoshin (08:28.778)
yeah, i th that's very interesting, and it's actually pretty smart how to do this with Jeff Ansys. I don't think I ever heard this this way of usage before. So that's very interesting because I was curious how is it possible? Interesting. Okay. so you started it based on your experience, and it's maybe some for some people may seem like it's a like a limited number of people, right? Usually product organizations want to focus on

Rebecca Rosenberg (08:55.405)
Mm-hmm.

Vit Lyoshin (08:58.388)
as many people as possible, to grab as many users as possible. Can you talk a little bit about the market size and like how big it is and what the opportunity looks like?

Rebecca Rosenberg (09:09.867)
Yeah, this is a question I get all the time, and actually one of the biggest, I think, challenges that we've had with Roboca is that there are a lot of people and frankly many investors and people on the VC side who just simply do not know enough about this space to know that the market is enormous. there are about two hundred and fifty million people globally who have low vision, who fall into this category that

Don't have correctable vision impairments, but who still have a significant amount of usable site and really want accessibility tools that help them to use that site. There are about 25 million of us in the US alone across a number of different kinds of conditions. There's many, many conditions that can kind of put you in the functionally low vision category. things like albinism, which is what I have, which is more on the rare side.

Vit Lyoshin (09:49.592)
Mm-hmm.

Rebecca Rosenberg (10:04.886)
To things like diabetic retinopathy and macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa, glaucoma, even all sorts of things that will kind of put people in in this category. But I think there's such an enormous misunderstanding of just how large of a market this is. Like I've gone in and I've I've pitched to to investors who will look me in the eye at the end of our pitch and be like, this can't possibly be a big market. I've never met somebody with low vision.

Vit Lyoshin (10:34.4)
Yeah. Yes.

Rebecca Rosenberg (10:34.708)
And I'm like, Hi like I I j we just met. Nice to nice to meet you. and so it really is a an interesting phenomenon. I you know, specifically people with low vision have for so long been made to feel like we are not disabled enough to receive help or or assistance.

that many of us have just gotten to a point where we don't even try, we don't ask for it, we just figure out how to do it ourselves. and that usually is not, you know, with one hundred percent accuracy. We just do the best that we can. And because this population has been so kind of neglected for so long, you know, there is a challenge associated with people just not even quite realizing we exist because we don't make a lot of noise.

Vit Lyoshin (11:13.719)
Yeah.

Vit Lyoshin (11:30.028)
Yeah, and that's fascinating because so many people affected by that. And I work for the government organization and we actually pay attention to accessibility, at least on like websites and things like that, for the public to use and have that option. But then again, it's mostly like voice and zoom and things like that. It's not really robust or augmented with anything. but simple stuff, the basic stuff, at least there. But

Rebecca Rosenberg (11:44.276)
Absolutely.

Vit Lyoshin (11:56.995)
Talking with private organizations and working in startups before, w we yes, we really never paid attention to this. It's not even in the backlog or roadmap. So and I'm I'm curious like what's what's wrong with this in the product world and why people don't pay attention. And maybe like you have some tips for at least at the basic level what to what to ask and what to build and what to pay attention to.

Rebecca Rosenberg (12:26.74)
Yeah, I think it comes down to just a an enormous public misunderstanding of what vision impairment looks like. And y you can't hold that against anybody. You either know or you don't know. you've either had experience with it or you know someone in your family or you haven't. and so a really big part of my job over the last, you know, many years has been this sort of education piece. And I think education

Vit Lyoshin (12:45.016)
Yeah.

Rebecca Rosenberg (12:54.034)
is an enormous part of entrepreneurship and innovation, especially when you're doing something that is really new or you're doing it for a market that is really new. And I think it's an under appreciated and and overlooked kind of part of the entrepreneurial process. And you know, really what that ends up looking like with with vision and and with accessibility is that

You know, people think vision impairment is black or white. They think that you either have, you know, the type of vision impairment where you need some nice strong glasses and you're fine. or, you know, they assume that you are totally blind and you have no light perception and you have, you know, you absolutely need a screen reader or an audio only option or you're somebody who knows Braille. And that just couldn't be further from the truth.

and I think as we begin to have because it it is coming through legislation and through I think more general understanding a little bit more about what this sort of low vision population deals with, it really is a distinct group of people that need to be accommodated very differently than you would accommodate someone who is totally blind. And I think that's really unique about the vision impairment population. And I think as we're developing this greater understanding of

Vit Lyoshin (13:54.38)
Mm-hmm.

Rebecca Rosenberg (14:11.712)
sort of the messy middle, the the low vision population, there'll be more of an emphasis on ensuring accessibility for that group. but things like contrast are really important, making sure that we're maintaining WCAG level standards of contrast, making sure that we can zoom in, that we can make text larger if we need to, that we can even just like I

pretty much zoom in on every website I have ever been on because the text is so small. And so making sure that when I'm on my phone and I go to zoom in so that I can see a picture, that it doesn't crash your website. like I've been even recently on some you know, like very high profile, like very big brand websites where when I go to zoom in so that I can like look at a product a little bit more specifically, it messes up their whole site and it has to reload and it's a whole nightmare.

And it's just not something that people think about. And so making sure that even just those little things, considering like being able to turn down the brightness or to minimize motion or to make sure that we're able to minimize transparency, especially with all the new like Apple liquid glass capabilities, there's just it's visually very complicated and that that tends to be a challenge for people. And so I think there's there's a whole lot to think about, but

Just starting off learning even just over the course of one day about many of the different types of disabilities that someone could have, I think makes somebody even like just infinitely more capable of creating an accessible experience when they've just spent even a little bit of time understanding each of these different categories. It's not a hard thing to do, especially when you build it in from the beginning. You just have to know enough.

Vit Lyoshin (16:02.007)
Mm-hmm.

Rebecca Rosenberg (16:04.32)
to know where to begin, and know what is certainly going to kind of create a problem.

Vit Lyoshin (16:11.052)
Yeah, and w while you're talking, I'm just thinking about this. The considering the number of people who need these abilities on the websites and apps, that's like a lost opportunity for many companies out there because people get in pissed off if if they cannot use it properly.

And they never come back. Like if I go online shopping and I can't look products and prices and figure it out and buy, I will go somewhere else. And and that's really big loss for their businesses. So I think people who listen in they should be learning about this and paying attention. That's that's a good thing to do.

Rebecca Rosenberg (16:30.635)
Absolutely.

Rebecca Rosenberg (16:46.411)
Absolutely. I mean, it is definitely something that I have done online. it's definitely something I know that friends of mine who have vision impairments have done, where you just get frustrated to a point where you're like, this is not for me. And with ReBokeh, you know, not only is it something that we talk to our organizational partners about, where they're like, Yeah, we don't have a lot of people with low vision come through our museum. And I'm like, well, it's probably because your museum has never been accessible to people with low vision.

Vit Lyoshin (16:59.192)
Uh-huh.

Vit Lyoshin (17:10.348)
Yeah.

Rebecca Rosenberg (17:15.315)
And so a long, long time ago, when they went on their third grade field trip and they couldn't see anything, they probably decided your space wasn't for them. And so one of the biggest things that we do with our new partner sites is that we work with them to do a little bit of press. We make sure that their local community is aware that this accessibility tool now exists for people in their space. So it is a process of

rewelcoming a population who probably did decide when they were a very little kid and they went on their field trip that certain spaces were not for them to rewelcome them and say, Hey, you know, we're sorry we're a little late to the party, but, you know, we want you here and we now have things that will enable you to be here more fully, and have a full experience when you're in our space. And one of the things, you know, just like very directly to ROI that we see people

Using Roboca for is shopping. Whether that's at airport concessions or, you know, buying a souvenir at a museum or like navigating the swag line when you're at a a sporting event, like that's one of the biggest things people report using Roboca for is shopping experiences. And you consider that those are sales that you you would lose out on if not

Vit Lyoshin (18:37.847)
Mm-hmm.

Rebecca Rosenberg (18:40.253)
if not for a tool like Roboca that is helping to accommodate people properly.

Vit Lyoshin (18:44.962)
Yeah, yeah, I mean make it easy for people and they will buy everything, right? So it's a no-brainer. Yeah. Yes. okay, so I wanna come back to to you starting with this project and building the app for your needs, and then you showed it to other people and you kind of have this community of users and people who are interested in your product. How are you getting or what kind of feedback are you getting from them? And

Rebecca Rosenberg (18:49.851)
Absolutely. Isn't that how we got Amazon?

Vit Lyoshin (19:14.732)
How are you managing that and how it does it influence like your roadmap and how you build in stuff, managing it through the community that you have?

Rebecca Rosenberg (19:23.647)
Yeah, I think it really, you know, for us is about making sure that there are direct lines of communication. And so there's a very large percentage of our user population and and absolutely anybody who has beta tested for us in any capacity has like my direct line. Whether it is, you know, over a phone or text or email, like they know how to get to me. and that is

I think something that is really important and has enabled, you know, at the highest levels of our company, like us to be aware of what it is that people are asking for, when there are problems, how we're addressing them, and how quickly we're able to address them. And also like what we should actually be considering as far as our our roadmap and what people are asking for and wanting as we go in that direction.

You know, there's always that same kind of consideration of, you know, w what is the problem that we're trying to solve versus just letting people kind of spew feature sets at us. and that is I think one of the things that our team does really well is making sure that we can filter all of those requests down to what is the the job to be done, like what is the problem that people are trying to solve and how can we then deploy that into ReBokeh in a way that is still as stable.

as low vision focused and as kind of discrete and portable as we have always built the technology to be.

Vit Lyoshin (20:57.576)
Mm-hmm. And and something I learned from your other interview, and I I just wanted to ask to to like follow up on that. You mentioned that like for normal vision people, it's basically pretty much everything is the same. But for people with accessibility needs for vision, they may have slightly different like abilities and preferences they need to correct they need correction with. How do you like get this?

highly personalized experience for everybody. How do you prioritize it? Basically, I'm just curious because this is such a unique need, I guess, for that everybody's different, literally.

Rebecca Rosenberg (21:37.459)
Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. And I constantly think of this one example of my two friends who also have albinism who are sisters, and they tell this story of how one of them, like her best mechanism for reading is that she wants to be like under the covers in as like dark of a situation as possible with like only the slightest bit of light so that she can read, and the other sister, you know, same biology, same condition.

needs to be in like an incredibly well lit room in order to read comfortably. And so it really just comes down to personal preference. It comes down to sometimes how much sleep you got the night before. It comes down to how much work you've done on your computer versus on paper before, you know, whatever it is that you're trying to see. And so I think something we've done at ReBokeh that's been really important to me that I think often gets lost in accessibility is that

We try to treat the end user like the most competent person in their condition and their needs. There's a lot out there that is very focused on sort of solving with a silver bullet you know, any given condition. And I think it really misses again, like it's all people are always working with with good intentions, but I think they sometimes miss that there is just this.

extensive nuance between individuals. And so providing the tools to the end user and the full extent of tools. And then letting them decide in the moment what it is that actually works for them. Not kind of saying, hey, we know you have albinism, we think you'll like this, or hey we know you have, you know, macular degeneration, we think you're gonna like this. Because chances are we're wrong. And so can we

Provide to the end user as many options as possible without it being overwhelming. And you know, while they can still kind of navigate the screen and the space and how to use it, but say, hey, you know, like we trust you to be the expert and the most competent one on your conditions and your needs and what you're feeling in the exact moment you're using our technology, and you get to decide how you set it up. And I think that's one of the things that makes Roboca different from a lot of what's out there is that.

Vit Lyoshin (23:50.774)
Yeah. Yeah.

Rebecca Rosenberg (23:56.636)
really core built like nuance.

Vit Lyoshin (24:00.137)
Yeah, and and this is amazing because it's also hard to do that you have to listen and pay attention and do this hyperpersonalization. And I think many other products, at least like for my conversation and experience, they kind of trying to fit everybody into the same kind of funnel or go through the same thing and have the same experience as much as possible, which is kind of weird in most situations. Okay.

Something else I I wanted to double check is as a innovator and product person, is there anything that you intentionally not building in your product?

Rebecca Rosenberg (24:40.126)
That's such a good question. so something that has always been important to us is, and this goes back to something I said a little bit earlier, is that the low vision population is not just less blind. Like we are not just a slightly

l like a a a population that needs slightly less help than the blind population, we actually need accessibility tools that are entirely different. And one of the challenges with a lot of what's out there is that it really has been designed for somebody who is blind.

And then assumed that that thing that was designed for somebody who is blind would work for the low vision population because they're just less blind. When really it is an entirely different group of people that needs an entirely different set of accessibility solutions. And so like there's a number of things that are when you when you build in

Things that make a technology like Roboca more accessible for somebody who is totally blind, we are actually making it less accessible for somebody who is low vision because we're cluttering a space with tools that they don't actually need. And so, you know, it is obviously incredibly important to build with accessibility for someone who is totally blind in mind. Like, that's not what I'm trying to say. What I'm trying to say is that Roboca has been and always, you know, will be for the

the low vision community and making sure that we are not building in all of those things that make it more accessible for somebody who is blind at the at the deficit of our core usage, which is for the low vision community. And so, you know, there are things, for example, like door detection. there are, you know, mechanisms of implementing like audio feedback that we will never do because it really is actually makes something less usable to the low vision population. And so

Rebecca Rosenberg (26:39.116)
So that's I think almost especially now in like the AI age, I think a better question to be asking innovators is what you just said, which is what are you actually not gonna build? especially when we can with a couple prompts, you know, build just about anything. What is our act where are our guide our our guide our guardrails? Where are our guardrails? And where are we going to say that is actually outside the scope of what I want our our technology to do?

Vit Lyoshin (26:54.038)
Yeah.

Vit Lyoshin (27:09.398)
Yeah, yeah, I think this is great. And and yeah, one one thing is to have guardrails and not build everything for everybody. And another thing is also like try not to deploy things too fast because you will create more mess and issues. Like try to like show it to people, test it, make sure it works. Because we see right now is all this white coding and AI and things like that. People just ship stuff and and it's like hard to understand even how to use it and what it is. So

Rebecca Rosenberg (27:38.196)
That's such such an important point. Is that we've told entrepreneurs for so long to like just get their thing out there, and like if you're not a little bit embarrassed by the first version, you probably didn't ship it early enough. And like, you know, even you know, four years ago, that was good advice. And it still is good advice, but now it's good advice with a very big asterisk, and I think that is exactly what you just described, which is you know.

Vit Lyoshin (27:49.214)
Right.

Rebecca Rosenberg (28:05.914)
Yes, yes, but we want to make sure that we have developed something that is understandable by the end user, that is, you know, safe, that is specifically considering how we're storing user data. I think that is gonna be something that is an enormous problem over the next several years as we see breakdowns in vibe-coded stuff, as it relates to data privacy and security.

Vit Lyoshin (28:08.631)
Mm-hmm.

Vit Lyoshin (28:32.758)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. something about design, and I imagine when people use something like like your app, they have to go through some settings and clicks and and go through that. And historically that's been a challenge with users because the more clicks you add or the more options you add, people get like less usable and stuff. how do you design that it's still like usable?

and has many options and preferences. I'm just curious because of your like unique position with your product.

Rebecca Rosenberg (29:06.663)
Yeah, so one of the things we've actually done to combat that is that if you are a free user on Roboca, you will need to set up your account. And largely that's because it allows us to help maintain your settings, and when you save presets, which are combinations of filters, those are attached to your account. But one of the ways we've gotten past that sort of friction point is that at all of our partner sites, you are able to use Roboca entirely anonymously. And so when Roboca recognizes

Vit Lyoshin (29:25.911)
Mm-hmm.

Rebecca Rosenberg (29:36.597)
That you're within one of our partner sites, if you are not already a user who's like signed into your account, it will bypass the need for you to sign into an account at all. And so you download the app, you give us like you know your camera permission so that we can actually do what we need to do, and then it will automatically just allow you to use the full version of the app. And so I think knowing where and when and how and

Creatively thinking about when you need to ask for that information and what do you really need up front versus what can you maybe ask for later. And again, like heavily depends on your population and whether you're dealing with sensitive information or not, and how you've kind of set up your your overall product flow. But I think that it's something that we especially now are able to think a little bit more creatively about.

Vit Lyoshin (30:08.45)
Mm-hmm.

Vit Lyoshin (30:27.284)
Mm-hmm. Okay. I I'm a data person. I always like to ask questions about how to how you measure your success metrics, KPIs, all that stuff. So typically it's like engagement and clicks and and stuff like that. With your product, do you have any specific KPIs or metrics that you're tracking and and what they are and maybe something unique that you're tracking?

Rebecca Rosenberg (30:52.987)
Yeah, I think one of the things that's been most important to us is how many kind of what we call vision adjustments have been made with Roboca. And so that is really just an inversion of the the camera or a

adjustment of contrast or an adjustment of brightness because it's not for us like we don't want you to be on ReBokeh for 20 minutes at a time. Like that's just kind of unrealistic. We don't necessarily and we get asked this a lot especially in professional sports like are people just like holding up their phone and like looking at it like this the whole game? It's like no that's not what we want. you know we have people who are holding Roboka up who are using it to identify you know the score that they want to see on on the board.

Vit Lyoshin (31:29.089)
Ha ha ha.

Rebecca Rosenberg (31:39.303)
And then they're finding out that information independently, they're putting their device back down. But those vision adjustments that they're making are actually the true engagement with our technology. These are not data points that we like share publicly, but for the sake of kind of telling what what it is that we look at, we're not quite as worried about how long a user is engaging. So we'll look more at the number of times they're kind of coming back to the technology versus how long those sessions are.

Vit Lyoshin (31:39.532)
Mm-hmm.

Vit Lyoshin (31:49.656)
Mm-hmm.

Rebecca Rosenberg (32:08.86)
And we also want to know, you know, at our partner sites, what kind of sessions and usage and also adoption of the technology they're getting, how many people are downloading Roboca via, you know, the unique QR code at any one of our partner sites, and then what does that that user's engagement through their whole experience there look like? And so there's a lot of different things that we look at across different aspects of our business, but I think most important to us is really just those engagement points with the app.

that I think for a different company would not make as much sense as a KPI because it would just be, you know, somebody maybe working through a a workflow or something, whereas for us that actually is the core functionality is those vision adjustments.

Vit Lyoshin (32:51.884)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And then in those places like games and zoo or whatever, the aquarium that you mentioned. So one of the I guess unique things that you've learned you mentioned is about sales and people being able to easily go through and and buy something. Are there any other interesting facts or stories or

Rebecca Rosenberg (33:03.358)
Yeah.

Vit Lyoshin (33:18.055)
capabilities that you uncover that people could actually s do now with this technology. That was like interesting and inspiring.

Rebecca Rosenberg (33:27.397)
Yeah. I think one of my favorite stories, and this is outside of our this was actually really early on in Roboca, that like people ask, you know, what what do people use this for? Like who what are people using this for? And my answer has really become that there are as many use cases for Roboca as there are people using it. I know one who

sent me some information about how she was using it to take a sign language class because she if she hadn't had ReBokeh, she wouldn't have been able to sit in class and actually see the professor sign. And so she was using our technology to allow her to take this class and like learn a new language. we had somebody use it to play in an orchestra and so they were like particularly zoomed in on the conductor so that they could, you know, obviously in the case of an orchestra that

real-time information is really important. And so they were zoomed in on the conductor to make sure that they could see what the conductor was doing at any given time. And so they weren't quite using it to read their music, but even more importantly to make sure that they were engaged, that they were part of the the whole.

Vit Lyoshin (34:24.012)
Mm-hmm.

Rebecca Rosenberg (34:39.207)
You know, like I think I mentioned a little earlier, we've had people use this for shopping in all different mechanisms, whether it's to read pricing information or sizing information or to actually just see the thing that they might want to buy. we've had a lot of people say that, especially at our like the cultural organizations we work with, that Roboka enables them to

actually see like aspects of the animals or the exhibits that they've never been able to see before. Like they can actually see like the the facets on some of the larger gemstone exhibits or they can see the feathers on the animals and like the texture in a way that they've never been able to before. Or they're able to make a space significantly brighter so that they can actually see what's in that space as opposed to just feeling overwhelmed by how dark, especially in a museum sometimes it has to be.

Within some of our airport partners, it's really just about helping somebody get to where they're going with less stress. And so we get good feedback from our users there as well, that it's able to help them, you know, purchase their tickets in some cases, you know, find their luggage, identify their baggage, and just know which way they're going, which, as I'm sure you know, disability or not, anything that makes a travel day a little bit easier.

Vit Lyoshin (35:42.477)
Mm-hmm.

Vit Lyoshin (36:04.886)
Yeah, yeah. And and I also wanted to double check what kind of technologies are you using in your app? Is it like augmented realities and something with AI or can you say a little bit about w without maybe like very specifics?

Rebecca Rosenberg (36:20.486)
Yeah, so Roboca is fundamentally an augmented reality tool. So we're using the camera feed from the device and we're, you know, able to use

Vit Lyoshin (36:25.24)
Yeah.

Rebecca Rosenberg (36:30.458)
like metal on on iOS to adjust all of the different image parameters. something that we've done on the technology side that I think is unique but also really has made a difference for for our technology being good all around is that we've actually built natively on both platforms. And so ReBokeh is built natively in Swift for iOS and we've built natively, I believe in in Python and

Java for the Android platform. And so, you know, that is obviously harder, it's more expensive, it takes longer, but it has created a really stable experience on both platforms that is optimized to work well on those platforms. One of the things people like about what we do quite a bit is that

Vit Lyoshin (37:03.926)
Mm-hmm.

Rebecca Rosenberg (37:23.14)
Robocal will work offline. And so even if you get to a part of the museum that no longer has really good coverage, everything with the exception of the AI capabilities that do require some internet connectivity, all of the image adjustment capabilities will still work. And so we're doing as much as possible on device right now so that we can make sure that people are constantly getting a good experience, even if, you know, within an aquarium where there's so much water that is affecting, you know, the Wi Fi signal.

that they're still getting that good and full experience.

Vit Lyoshin (37:58.092)
Okay. Makes sense. Yeah, interesting. if we're looking at like five, ten years from now, whether it's with your app or in general for low vision people, what do you hope how they will like interact and see the world in like five, ten years?

Rebecca Rosenberg (38:18.66)
Yeah I think

Looking toward the future, some of the things that I'm excited about are just people with low vision being a little bit more empowered through ReBokeh to speak up, to ask for what they need, to advocate for themselves, to recognize that they actually are worth accommodating and worth, you know, having an accessible experience and deserving of that, and that they will press on some of these organizations who are less accessibility-focused.

Focused to have accessibility options available for them. Whether that is Roboca or whether it's something else, that is really something that I I'm I'm wanting to see, and I think we are beginning to see movement in that direction. I think from a technology perspective, just making sure that the

tool that we have built doesn't get overcomplicated for the sake of being overcomplicated. Just because we can doesn't mean that we should. But at the same time, how do we make sure that we are keeping up with the most current versions of technology across hardware and software?

And making sure that, you know, as more discrete options beyond the smartphone become available, that we're taking advantage of those and how are people actually using that to get have an even better and even more seamless and even more like deeply ingrained experience, whether that is at a game or at a museum or in the airport. And so there's there's a lot coming down the line that I'm I'm excited about, especially as it relates to continued technology.

Rebecca Rosenberg (39:59.338)
technology development.

Vit Lyoshin (40:01.089)
Yeah, yeah. Okay. Thank you very much, Rebecca, for talking to us today and showcasing your product and when and what you're doing. This is really great and inspiring. but before I let you go, I have my three innovation Q<unk>A's that I ask everybody. So I'm curious to know your answers. can you define innovation in a few words?

Rebecca Rosenberg (40:22.536)
Awesome. Let's go.

Rebecca Rosenberg (40:30.492)
I was thinking about this before we got on. I think that innovation is looking at a problem or a challenge in a new way. I think it actually doesn't have anything to do with technology at all. I think it really has to do with how we think about a problem.

Vit Lyoshin (40:53.791)
Mm-hmm. Okay, great. And then second question is which one innovation in the human history you think changed the world the most?

Rebecca Rosenberg (41:04.376)
Ooh. That's a good one. I I I think I've gotta stay on brand here and and say like the eyeglasses for a a number of reasons. I think you know, obviously

Vit Lyoshin (41:16.973)
Mm-hmm.

Rebecca Rosenberg (41:22.864)
an enormous part an enormous portion of the global population has a correctable refractive error, which is what glasses will will affect and and will help improve.

Vit Lyoshin (41:35.523)
Mm-hmm.

Rebecca Rosenberg (41:36.092)
But at the same time, I think the addition of glasses in many ways did erase the low vision population because people don't understand because they're so used to people being corrected with glasses, they don't quite understand that there's a very large population that is not blind but also not correctable with glasses. And so I think there's an enormous impact that that had in, you know, we talked about that for a very long time.

Vit Lyoshin (41:54.199)
Yeah.

Vit Lyoshin (41:59.257)
Yes. Okay. And the last question is which technology or device or software or something that we use today we will be laughing at ten years from now?

Rebecca Rosenberg (42:14.812)
Hmm. I this is probably a cheap answer, but I think AI in its current form. I think we are probably going to quickly outgrow the AI chatbot into some some new capacity where we're able to interact with it a little bit more fluidly and less like we're just emailing with Claude.

Vit Lyoshin (42:42.393)
Okay, yeah, sounds good. All right, thank you very much. that's it, and I hope we stay in touch and I wish you luck with with your app and more users.

Rebecca Rosenberg (42:54.704)
Amazing. Thank you so much. Really appreciate your time.

Vit Lyoshin (42:58.061)
Yeah, of course. Thank you. Bye bye.

Rebecca Rosenberg (43:01.084)
Of course.