The story of Knock Knock as told by Esther Mueni. Team Lead.
Esther and her team decided to put their skills as IoT engineers to use and solve a simple problem for their hearing impaired friend who had challenges figuring out when someone had knocked on the door and at one point was even involved in an accident because he couldn’t hear the lorry behind him that had lost control and was hooting. A few prototypes later, they are now taking on the challenge of building a gadget that can interpret a whole range of sounds to make life indoors and outdoors easier for deaf individuals. Read the story below.
Hi Esther, what’s your background, and what has been your career?
My name is Esther Mueni, I did BBIT (Business Information Technology) in university, but I am currently a self-taught IoT engineer and I’ve been doing this for about 5 years now. I also double in product management & leadership.
What are you working on currently and how did the idea come up?
We are currently working on a product called Knock Knock. This is a gadget that captures different sounds from the environment and translates them into visual and vibratory alerts for the deaf or individuals with hearing loss.
The idea emerged when we saw how hard it was for our friends who are hearing impaired to interact with the day to day sound environment, for instance responding to a knock at the door would be a big challenge. This is where the idea and the name came from. The aim is to work on a single gadget that can capture and relay a whole range of sounds using lights and vibrations.
How did you build it? (tools and resources used)
We started building it as simple project to solve a problem for friends, we were not even thinking about going commercial with it. We simply wanted to use our skills as IoT engineers to build a solution for this immediate problem for a friend.
When we finally shared the project, we realized that this is not just a knock on the door problem. It goes further than that into other sounds such as a baby crying for a deaf parent, car hooting, ambulance sirens, other types of alarms to mention a few.
We used a whole range of IoT tools and equipment to build the product.
How did you get your first customers/users? (marketing strategies)
Besides the friends who we initially made the gadget for, we got our first customers through referrals.
We met an individual who was working with an institution for the hearing impaired and had experienced a similar problem with their deaf students and needed such a solution for their institution. This is how we got our first customer.
Financially/user acquisition wise how is the product doing?
We are currently working with a number of individuals and institutions and hope to get more on board as we improve the product.
What are some of the challenges you have faced & some disadvantages of working on the product?
One of the challenges we have faced has been on settling on the products that we are building especially as far as pricing is concerned.
In as much as we are trying to ensure that our products are highly affordable, they are still a bit pricey to our target customer mainly because of the laws relating to importation of hardware products.
To solve this, we shifted majorly from B2C to B2B and also subdivided the product into different tiers/categorizations (basic, mid and premium). We are currently mainly targeting institutions that work with the deaf rather than selling directly to the individuals themselves.
One of the mistakes we made was building before doing a market research. Initially we built to solve one problem and after sharing the product we realized that there was a whole lot more to look at and solve for. If we had done some research, surveys, focus groups etc. prior to building the first prototype, we would have used less resources.
One of the main disadvantages is that we are working on a hardware product and currently as mentioned earlier there are a lot of laws relating to importation of hardware components that do not favor our business model and can affect both timelines and pricing.
What are some of your future plans?
Our general goal with knock knock is to have a single small gadget that is able to interpret all kinds of sounds within the environment to improve the day to day lives of the deaf and hearing impaired individuals.
To ensure that we build right, we are also working directly with the people we are building for and even taking sign language classes so that everyone working on the product understands the people they are building for and can converse with them for feedback.
If you had the chance to do things differently, what would you do?
Apart from doing the user research first, I would do everything the same way we have done so far because each step we took taught us something, every decision we made however bad it turned out, gave us a lesson that could not be learnt anywhere else or any other way.
Any recommendations in terms of who to follow, YouTube videos to watch, a useful website or books to read (learning resources)?
I think this depends on what one is interested in because there is a lot out there online for you to learn from. If you are interested in IoT you need to read blogs on IoT, follow Twitter (X) influencers who talk about IoT and share related resources.
But one thing I would say is that you need to keep informed about things happening not just in the tech world but also in other sectors like business and politics because these are things that will directly affect your company or product whether you like it or not.
Where can people go to know more about you and your work?
You can check out our work on knockknock.co.ke and find out more about what we are currently doing, as well as see a roadmap of what we intend to do in the future.
Bonus Question: What does success mean to you?
Success to me is all about seeing how far I have come in comparison to where I am at right now. It’s not a static goal that one has.
For me it is mainly about where I am right now in comparison to where I was yesterday. If there is improvement then that’s success, if not then there is a lesson to be learnt and improvements to be made.
Startup Spotlight: Life Planner App.
There are good apps, and then there are great apps. Well designed, simple, works as intended and adds value to your life. Life Planner is one of the great apps.
The app helps you manage your daily tasks, finances, increase your productivity and create healthy habits that stick. I’ve been using it mainly for task management and tracking my new habits 💪🏾 and so far so good.
Check it out here 👉🏽 Life Planner 🌞
Being built by 🚀 Samuel Owino
Loved this edition? Share and subscribe to receive next week’s story of a founder trying to help Kenyan artists sell their music directly to fans.
