“The difference to me, between an engineer and a scientist, is that an engineer builds things for people— scientists investigate things because they're trying to answer questions.”
— Jean Anne Booth
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Today’s guest is Jean Anne Booth, CEO at UnaliWear. UnaliWear is a tech company focused on extending independence with dignity. She has 30 years of experience in technology, spanning all facets of business— management, product engineering & development, marketing, engineering, and operations.
Prior to founding UnaliWear, Jean Ann founded, built, and sold multiple companies, one of which was sold to Texas Instruments (Luminary Micro) and the other sold to Apple (Intrinsity). She holds a BSEE from the University of Texas and an MSCE degree from National Technical University.
Jean Anne possesses an incredibly deep, acute understanding of how to define, prototype, and develop truly customer-centric technology products. As a well-renowned pioneer of the semiconductor revolution, Jean Anne’s thinking is something entrepreneurs of all backgrounds can learn from.
If you are looking to absorb the first-principles of product-led entrepreneurship, Jean Anne is someone you MUST pay attention to :)
“What are the real things behind products that help extend your independence? And that was when we came up with our tagline— extending independence with dignity.”
—Jean Anne Booth
Highlights
The timeless principles of customer-centric product design & development.
Decoding the hidden messages behind customer feedback.
When is hiring your mother the right move?
Independence and dignity— a timeless human right!
Optimizing both product form and function— where should one start?
The Cherokee word for ‘friend’
The life of a serial innovator :)
Transcript
Jean Anne Booth
Well, thank you first. I really appreciate the opportunity to be here and talk to you guys. It's a real pleasure. And I've enjoyed getting to know you so far. So just a little bit about how I got here. My background is an electrical engineer and many years in industry. So I was in semiconductors for 30 years and two of my startup companies were semiconductor companies. And then I retired which was awesome because I was a dive master and a liveaboard dive boat. And then I came back to work because of my mom. And that's the company I have today. I guess that's a big part of what we'll be talking about today is is those companies with that background in semiconductors, one of my companies sold to Texas Instruments, another one sold to Apple and so of course there's there's why I was retired and getting to be a divemaster liveaboard dive vote. But I did come out of the dive boat in 2013 to start UnaliWear and did that for my mom.
Jon Low
Thank you. Why don't we dive straight into UnaliWear because of your mom, you started it, and I'm sure she didn't give you a prescription and say, “Daughter I would love for you to get back into entrepreneurship and develop a product that many people other than myself are going to love in need.”
Jean Anne Booth
My mom was a model. She was absolutely stunning, gorgeous, stylish, you know, never left the house without being completely done. And you know, poor mom then she has an engineer for a daughter but there you go. It worked out in the end.
So you could probably tell mom is gone now but we we started you know, they were together. And what happened was as she turned at being a model, she was tall and slender, and as she got older, slender became actually downright frail. So she was cognitively capable, that was wonderful. But she was physically frail. And so we have that discussion that you have with your loved ones at that time of life where you're saying, “Hey, you know, I want you to be safe. I want you to be independent, and what can I do to help?”
And so being the engineer, I went out and I created a spreadsheet. You know, here's the solutions of all the products that are on the market. There's this pendant, and that pendant, and this pendant and that pendant. And the very first of the passive monitoring systems that actually put sensors in your home. And I sat down with mom and I went through the little spreadsheet and showed her pictures of everyone and I'd saved the passive monitoring system for last because I thought for sure she'd go for that.
And she looked at me and she goes, “Don't get it for me. I'll never wear it.” And I swear to God, her teeth did not move. And it was like, you know if you remember that time when you were a teenager, you know, and your parents would give you that look, I hadn't seen that look since I was a teenager, which was just the other day, but I knew she meant it. And so I left her place pretty disappointed because I wanted something that was going to keep her safe.
But it was very clear that I could spend whatever money I wanted to spend and she wouldn't get to be wearing. So, you know, I nibbled on it for a couple of weeks. Talked to some of the folks that I'd worked with before and some of my other companies, one of my co-founders of this one has actually been with me and multiple companies for 20 years. And, you know, we came up with the fundamental patented technology in the KANEGA watch, which is our battery system in the band. And so at that point, it was like you know what we could actually make you know what Time Magazine called a Smartwatch for grandma, right?
So we could actually make a watch. That looks good. That sounds good. That helps in the demographic and so I called up my mom, I was really excited. This is about two weeks after she didn't move her teeth, and I said, “Hey, Mom, how about if we make you a watch? And you talk to it, and it talks to you, and it can remind you to take your medications. And if you forget where you're gone like you have a senior moment, it could give you directions home. What do you think about that?”
My mom goes, “I’d throw it out the window…” And I said, “Great Mom, you're hired…”
And so that started the very beginning of what ended up being about six years of work together, as she was our senior user experience advisor in the development of UnaliWear’s KANEGA watch. And so everything we did, she weighed in on and she was personally responsible for about the first hundred people who came through our focus groups. And you know, she, you know, she helped us. Well, she did her job.
Her job was to make sure that people didn't say I'd throw it out the window and it was a great great deal because, you know, we got a chance to work together, which we'd never done before. You know, she didn't she still didn't understand any of the technology behind it. But for the very first time because I wasn't working in semiconductors anymore, she was able to actually see, you know, the things that you can do when you're a creator. So it's great.
Jon Low
Well, that's Thank you. It's quite a story. Thanks for sharing. And through the process, Jean Anne, what did you learn specifically about the needs of your mother and people just like her? Discoveries that were quite insightful, shocking, or contrary to what most people think, that really informed your design engineering and team processes around product development?
Jean Anne Booth
Yeah, there's actually. It's surprising. It's shocking. There's your clickbait!
What do people think of, I mean the normal thought as soon as you think of an older person, you get this mental image, usually an old woman, probably a cane next to her. She's staring pensively out a window, worried about her financial future, right?
And, you know, that's not reality. But that's the first place that everybody's head goes. And if you say, I'm going to do a product for the elder generation, the first thing they all think about is skilled nursing, and the sickest of the sick and the frailest of the frail. And although there are people who need solutions there, they're not nearly as many who need solutions who are independent, but vulnerable.
So, the first thing that we had to kind of work through was, you know, just what part of the solution set were we going to go after and what part of the problem space and understanding. You know, independent but vulnerable is a different stage than what everybody thinks of just as soon as they say, you know, this is a product for seniors that means, you know, you don't understand anything and you can't do anything, right. So there was a whole lot of learning that we did through our focus groups.
In those early days, we had over 400 people come in through our focus groups, all across the US. And, you know, it wasn't as much about when you talk about a focus group, everybody's always thinking about, you know, you showed them a picture of your product, and they said, no, I want it to be pink. And that could be a focus group. But that's not what we were looking for.
What I was really looking for was, what are the real things behind products that help extend your independence, and that was when we came up with our tagline which is extending independence with dignity. And what that meant. As we went through those focus groups beginning to understand that the number one fear people have of growing older is losing control over their own lives. And Nielsen does studies on this, they haven't done one in a couple of years. But it's because it never changes. It is the number one fear that people have of growing older, which when you think about it, you go, “Well, duh,” but nobody ever really thinks about it. And there's a couple of things that drive that.
So, all of the products that we have in this market space today, you push the button, and your kids show up and they take away your car keys, you push the button, and your kids show up and they move you out of your home that you've lived in for the last 70 years. So above all, you're not dumb, don't push the button. Right? And that's the big challenge that people deal with in this space.
Independence with dignity for us is all about control. It means you control your own aging and if you want to share information with somebody, then share it. And if you don't, then don't. Really what we're doing is we're freeing them from the tyranny of their children. Yeah, it sounds really incredible. But it's important, right? So there are more things that go behind that understanding that the number one fear people have of growing old is losing control. And one of them is that you have to get an understanding that people well, nobody can actually rationalize like a human being can, right? So you can sit there and you can look at somebody else and go, you have white hair, you've got a cane, you are old.
But when you ask that person, they are not, right. You tell them and they're like, “Oh, well, I'm not old. I don't need a problem yet, because I'm not old.” And that's that rationalization of the human experience that says, I don't need that. But you do. And this is the big conflict that happens between loved ones and their parents, you know, in the children is, you know, the children are gone, “Oh my God, you're so old,” and the parents are gone. And that's driven by that stigma of the solutions that are in the marketplace today.
So, just as soon as you show up, and you're wearing a pendant around your neck, and it's got a big button on it, and the buttons probably read, then everybody's looking at you and they're gone, “Oh, gee, man, you're so old.” And of course, that's not the image I want to present. Nobody wants to present that image. So not understanding that just because you're older, doesn't mean that your vanity is gone. There's nothing that says I'm going to turn 60 years 70 year and suddenly I want all of my products to be pager with a big button. I mean, that's just not the way it works in real life.
So, I actually kind of figured this out with my mom. So my mom was typical of her generation in the silent generation, you know, she smoked for years, so she had COPD. And that meant that she was on oxygen later in life, and she would actually not see people if it meant she had to take her oxygen with her. And it would be like, “But Mom, why would you deny yourself the opportunity to see your friends?” And she'd be like, “Well, because I don't want them to see me wearing this.” It's like, “They want to see you. They don't care about the oxygen, right?”
But she was human. And we're all that way. And somehow, as we created these products back in the 80s, we didn't look at them from the perspective of the person who's wearing them. We looked at him from the perspective of “You're old, I know what's best for you, it needs to be big and ugly and clunky and beige.”And that's not what anybody wants.
Jon Low
And I suppose that the challenge of developing a product that the market actually wants today. And, you know, it's fascinating as you were speaking, Jean Anne, we're thinking what a clear frame of experience you have in terms of actually developing a product to meet not the surface need of a particular market group, but really the lines are the communication behind the communication.
Your having obviously started multiple businesses and sold them is no accident yourself. Did you always have that product mentality? Or were they catalysts or mentors or certain projects you worked on that really helped click something? Because you do come from an engineering background.
Jean Anne Booth
Yeah. So, you know, I think I've always kind of had that product mindset for two reasons. Part of when I went to school, I worked every other semester in the co-op program at NASA. And that was awesome. That was so phenomenal. And the thing that helped me see was not just the technology but how it was being used. I actually had the computer systems. I maintained all the computer systems in the space shuttle transportation program office, and you know, so it was all about the computers being used, and I had the opportunity to train the executive administrative staff in their very first use of computers.
And, and it was really cool because it changed my mindset from, well, you know, it's a computer and you, you know, do this to open a file and all that kind of stuff, too. Oh, well, you're looking for that file. Well, first of all, you have to open the drawer. You know, it changed the whole perspective of how I would think about things. And as I went along, in my education, and then along in my career, you know, it became something more integral to myself of kind of the difference to me, between an engineer and a scientist, is that an engineer builds things for people, scientists, you know, investigate things, maybe build things because they're trying to answer questions. Engineers are trying to bring a purpose of value, right? And so the way you know that you've got value is that people love what you've built for them. And so now you get to build things that people love. And that's where that comes from.
Jon Low
So well said, and, you know, and obviously, with time you've also overseen engineering teams yourself. How did you as a leader, with a technical background or as a manager of technical people, work with technical talent? How did you instill into their mindset, this, you know, to be at peace with the fact that human beings are more emotional beings then rational, whilst technical people, often designed with clear rationale— how did you help your engineers bridge that gap or manage them to think differently in that way?
Jean Anne Booth
You know, I think over the years and through through the companies it's become very kind of just one of those things for the people who work for me, you just don't you in the senior market, we have a have a good description for it, you know, we call it, “Nothing about me without me.” So, you're building a product for the senior market. You can't just build it because it's what you think, well, you can, but you're not going to delight anybody that way. If you want to delight them, then it needs to be with them. So, nothing about me without me.
And in creating that mindset for my teams, you know, kind of dependent on when engineers would join us. Sometimes they felt that, that it wasn't all that important. But then, you know, I'd have experiences where somebody would go to some other company and all of a sudden they would discover that they weren't getting feedback on you know, did they add the company logo in the right place? And was it the right size and is it readable and, you know, all of that kind of stuff. And they'd come back and go, you know, because what we're doing is gonna make products that people love and I would much rather make products people love then just make products.
Jon Low
My understanding is also when you know you were developing your current product, the KANEGA, you know you can maybe references that have our significance that symbolize something, would you mind sharing a bit about what they symbolize and why you chose those names?
Jean Anne Booth
Sure, sure. Yeah. So, you know, ‘Li’ is kind of the english language version of a Cherokee word that means ‘friend’, and Kanega, which is what we call our watch, is the Cherokee word for ‘speak.’ So, what it means is, we're the friend who speaks to you. And if you've ever created a company, you know, one of the biggest challenges especially today is, you know, what are you going to name it and are you going to be able to get your Twitter handle and your Facebook page and you know, LinkedIn, your main domain, your URL and all of that. And so it leads you to look for something.
And in the traditional space that we're in, everybody has a name that includes either the word life or the word assist. That doesn't extend independence with dignity. But the friend who speaks to you does and where it really comes from. You can see it if you look at a picture of my mom on our website, our background is heavily Cherokee. And so in being able to bring that naming into the company and create a different feel for the people who wear our watch. You know, I had that opportunity to honor a little bit of heritage too.
Jon Low
Oh, that's really nice. That's a really wonderful backstory there, glad you shared it. And, you know, upon initial inspection, I don't I don't have the watch. But, you know, I'd probably use it one day. But you know, it's not just a watch based on what you've told us. You know, I think a lot of people would, just because of sensory bias, they see a device on their wrist and they think, oh, it must be just a Smartwatch. But my understanding of why this exists, can be reversed engineered to your deep understanding of the use case, and what these elderly people specifically need that they're being underserved, or they're not being seen. And can you share some of those distinctions, and why it actually warrants such an entirely different approach to designing this product?
Jean Anne Booth
Sure. So first, let me actually show you how it works in real life. And so I'll hold him up here. So, the watch is the name that you gave it, my mom named hers what I use for mine in honor of my mom. So Fred Astaire, what time is it? And so you can ask him what day it is what time it is or more important things like Fred Astaire get help. For help, I am contacting the operator, press the crown button once if you do not need help, and I will cancel the call.
So, I'm going to go ahead and press the ground button and cancel the call. But that shows you first of all that it is speech. If you talk to it, it talks to you and we have inside the watch we have Wi Fi we have cellular we have GPS. So wherever you are, whether you're at home, or you're out and about, you're able to make a connection to an emergency medical alarm call center operator. They bypass 911 and go direct to dispatch plus they're able to add information that says you know your allergic to penicillin and you have diabetes, anything that may help the emergency responders actually deal with you more safely more quickly. That's what the medical alarm call centers do.
And so there's other things that we do as well. And the thing that actually made me come off of the dive boat and start you know, was our fundamental patented technology, and if you can see it here, that is our battery system in the band. So there's a battery, and there's one on each side. You simply take one off of the watch, and you put it on the charger, take one from the charger, put it on the watch. And you actually get this is not going to reach this far. We unplug it. You actually get a little charger with a total of two batteries on the charger, two batteries on the watch. And so you never have to take the watch off to charge.
Now that's super important in the elder part of the demographic that we serve because the number one cause of injury, death among seniors is falls. Most of those falls happen in the bathroom. Most of them happen at night. So, even if you give a loved one a smartwatch, it is most likely charging when they're most vulnerable. And that's not good. So having the ability to say, you know what, we can keep my mom safe 24 seven, that made me come off of the boat, because it wasn't just about, you know, oh, I want to build another product company. They're hard to do, they're expensive to raise money for, they take a long time. You know, it's hard to do!
But unless you do something specifically to solve the issues here, then, you know, you aren't actually providing a solution to a really big problem. So, the other things that we do, I'm going to take my watch off here, which I don't usually do, but I will. And that is you can see that it's a very bright white on black dust. And we do this on purpose because a significant portion of the elder generation has age related macular degeneration, or glaucoma, or yellowing a vision. And so what they need to be able to see is maximal contrast. And that's what the white on black gives you.
So, in the early days, especially, you know, as everybody else is building all these smartwatches, all the display guys would come to me and they'd be like, “Oh, I have the greatest color display.” And I'd be like, I don't care. I want black and white, and the brighter, the better. And so, you know, you can thank my mom for that, because we gave her a watch that didn't have a bright display. And after we'd been doing focus groups, like for a month with, and she goes, “You know, Jean Anne,I can't see that.” And I'm like, “No, mom, you didn't tell me.” So, it's really important.
And the other piece with that display is, is also very important, as well. As you age, the chemical signals in the brain that say “I'm thirsty” quit working. So, seniors are chronically dehydrated. Being dehydrated means that you lack the galvanic skin response that you've actually seen, as you know, in the days when we used to go to the airport. If you look next to one of those clear stations, you'll see there's a bottle of hand lotion. And a lot of times they will, especially for women, they'll make them put hand lotion on their fingers before they put their fingers onto the machine. And that is so that they can actually be read by the machine.
So, the end result of that is, you know, people would sit there and they would tell me, “You know, seniors can't handle technology, this is too much technology for them.” And you know, first of all, the answer is we hid the technology behind, you know, an easy, user friendly interface. But the answer is— it's not that the seniors can't do the technology, it's that you have to understand where they are in there. And that means touch technology is not a place to go.
And I really figured it out when I was teaching my mom how to use her iPad, and she would take her finger and like bounce it off of the iPad because she knew it wasn't going to work because it never did because she was chronically dehydrated. And at that point, I said, “Okay, fine” and I got her a bluetooth keyboard and off we went, you know, when we already go watches, you know, General Settings, like maybe a CES or something, people will come by and, and they'll touch the watch, and they'll go, it doesn't work. And I'll go, “It does too, but it's not for you!”
There's actually a couple of others too. So, it is possible to dislodge this. So there's a safety battery in the base that's kept charged by the little pods. And that way, even if all of the batteries are off, then your watch still works. Fred Astaire What time is it? So, one advantage is that it's much easier for people to do when it may not work if, say, for instance, you have a cold. And so that's where the crown button comes in. So, you know, if you're technologically sophisticated, you look at the watch, and you go, Wait a minute, that's a digital watch. Why do you have a chrome button? Well, because it's actually the Help button. And so you press and hold it and off you go.
Jon Low
Wow, great. I'm really glad you shared all these insights. Because I think, you know, one of the things I think a lot of users can take away from this is really the mindset of understanding your end user at a very deep level. And my understanding as well is you've also noticed that other underserved groups other than elderly people have been attracted by your products because they serve those needs. What are some of the other extensions to your product line that you are excited about?
Jean Anne Booth
This is our second generation watch that we have today. This one is fourth generation cellular. And we first came to market in 2017 with the first generation device. So today our wares range in age from 16 to 100 years of age all across the US. So, when I first developed the product with my mom, and for my mom, you know, I knew that we were putting together a package and capabilities that was good for more than just seniors. And so when we did a Kickstarter campaign in 2015, one of the things that we did was we were looking for other independent but vulnerable populations who would opt in and tell us who was interested.
And so today in that population in addition to, of course, seniors, who wear KANEGA watches, we also have people with MS, Parkinson's, Epilepsy, Down Syndrome, Blindness, disabled vets and traumatic brain injuries. So these are all, you know, people who are totally independent. But for one reason or another, they're vulnerable, or they need help with medication load, because that's one of the things that we do with the KANEGA watch.
Jon Low
Wow, you've got a lifetime more work ahead of you.
Jean Anne Booth
You have no idea because we didn't even talk about one other thing that we do. We also have patented AI in the watch. And so what we do is we look at motion patterns, location patterns, speech patterns, and movement overall. And we use that to provide predictive preemptive support for our population. So we call it learning. Yeah, yeah. We call it learning the wares lifestyle.
Because one of those things that you figure out is, I mean, we're all unique, different people. And we also age differently. But among ourselves, we have our own patterns that are kind of where we are. And when things change, you know, maybe that's indicative of a need to go see your doctor or a need to get help for you. And so that's part of what we do, we actually take the information that we gather in learning the wearer's lifestyle, and we use that to determine if there's been a change in motion, or a change in voice that may indicate maybe depression or something along those lines. And we use that to, you know, just provide a little bit more support. One of the things that we actually have, it's almost in UX so it'll be coming out soon is what we call guide me home assistance. So, this was that senior moment that I talked about in the conversation with my mom so it's your place if you realize that you might need a little bit of help getting home. You know, you're close, but you can't quite remember how to get there. And that's what the guard guard against wondering what guide me home assistance does for you is you can ask your watch for directions home. And Fred will give you directions home and he'll watch you execute them.
So if you don't execute them, then he'll connect you with the medical alarm operator, who can talk to you about what's going on, see if maybe they have you just stay there, and they'll send somebody to your location to get you home. And in that way, you know, one of the things that I'm hopeful that this is going to bring for us is a significant reduction in the number of seniors in the missing senior signs. That's what I'm really hoping for here.
Jon Low
Well, that's very, very exciting. And, you know, you mentioned the hardware business is difficult, but by the sounds of it, you are truly a tech company with a subscription model that necessitates that device purely because of an understanding of the users you're actually serving.
Jean Anne Booth
So, when I talk to investors, I call us ‘DaaS’ — device as a service. So for those of you guys who are old enough to remember this, you know, most of the physical products that have a subscription, actually started out where they were devices as well. So think about a cell phone in the early days, the cell phones, nobody ever paid for their cell phone. The market wasn't really big enough, and the competition was strong enough that you never bought your own phone. You just went to, you know, the AT&T store or the Verizon store or the Sprint store. And, you know, you signed up for a two to four year plan. And then at the end of it, they would send you an email that says, congratulations to you, you've qualified for a free upgrade. And what that really meant was they wanted you to sign up for a new subscription, right? And as a part of that, they would amortize the hardware.
So, that's pretty common for marketplaces that are still in growth mode and haven't reached, you know, significant growth. I think in the fullness of time, the hardware would separate from the service even in the spaces that we're in. But in terms of penetration, you know, products that include medical alert capabilities, like a KANEGA watch, it's significantly under penetrated. Now, of course, my particular bias driven by my mom is that that's because the products are ugly and stigmatizing. But you know, still from that perspective, it's kind of a new market. So, you don't buy the watch. You only buy the service, and that's the way that we work it here.
Jon Low
Thank you. Thank you for making that so clear, Jean Anne. We're just running out of time here. But is there anything else that you'd like to share with the audience before we close this up? Or you feel this is a good place to leave it?
Jean Anne Booth
I think there's one that you might find interesting. And that is I did actually bring a couple of pictures. I went to the office so that I could grab these not pictures, but actual realities. So there's a couple of different ways, especially when you're making a physical product, there's a couple of different ways to do it. And right now, we seem to be in one of those phases where, you know, you have a designer create the look and feel, and then you try to squish all of the bits into it. And that's okay, as long as you've got a big box and you got plenty of room to squish the bits in.
If you're talking about something like a wearable, there's not a whole lot of room. And so it's really hard to do that. So we went the other way around. My first question when I came off the boat was, “Hey, look, can we do this reasonably?” Right? Can I reasonably cost effectively build a smartwatch with the kinds of capabilities that we want to do for a KANEGA watch and so I actually went out and was fundraising on our very first prototype that we made bootstrapped and I will show it to you now.
This lovely piece of engineering has a felt back, and a 3D-printed plastic case with a little stack of boards on the inside that are actually all of the internal functions of a KANEGA watch. So we built this first, and I went out and I fundraised against this and that was when I learned a really important lesson. Very few investors can see beyond the outside. And in fact, even when we were doing focus groups and stuff, I would rarely actually even bring a product in because all you can see for most people is what's there, not the vision of what's coming. And what I didn't expect was that much of the investor community to be that blindsided by being able to say, “I've proven it can be done. Now I'm going to make it beautiful, right?”
And so along the way, there were many, many, many, many, many prototypes. But here's the first generation KANEGA watch. Soit is a medical grade stainless steel, it's 60% heavier than what I'm wearing right now, and five millimeters thicker. And so at a quarter of a pound, it's pretty dang heavy for a 90 year old to wear. And that's what drove some of the changes that we made in our second generation. So anyway, I thought maybe maybe people would find it kind of interesting to see, you know, we don't do a whole lot of physical products today in the greater scheme of the universe. And so for those who never really understand what's involved in it, now, maybe you can kind of see, just because, you know, you've seen one of them doesn’t mean that it can't turn into one of these.