Literacy and Voice Technology with Matt Hammersley of Novel Effect

VFH Episode 47

In this episode, Teri welcomes Matt Hammersley, the Co-Founder and CEO at Novel Effect, Inc.

Novel Effect is specialized in creating innovative, entertaining, and immersive story-based experiences that seamlessly blend real-life and imaginary worlds. Their patented technology brings together the power of voice recognition and the best creators in entertainment to add dimension and interactivity to traditional media people enjoy together like books, television, film, games, and more.

Novel Effect is an award-winning free storytime app and has achieved great milestones in the voice technology space. Matt started the company with his wife, and has a background in Chemical Engineering and working as a cryptographer for the government. He was also a patent attorney and has filed numerous patents, including for Novel Effect.

Key points from Matt!

All the great things that Novel Effect is doing and how that ties in with healthcare and kids’ development.
Using technology in a way that brings people together.

Novel Effect

They started off and are well-known for books. The app synchronizes a movie-style sound track as a parent and child read aloud a print book together.
The app hears a person read a book aloud and determines whether that person is actually reading the book or talking to the person next to them. When it finds that the person is reading the book, it knows exactly the point at which they are in the book, and synchronizes the right music and sound effects for wherever they are.
A user can open a book in the middle and the app will pick right up from that point.
The idea for the app all started with Matt’s daughter. He and his wife wanted to build a little library for her. A friend of his wife brought them a book and read it aloud for everyone. She captivated everyone by adding fun voices and sound effects to her story. This gave Matt the idea to create something that would enable everyone to enjoy such storytelling.
He filed patents for the idea, and within three months he had quit his job, they had sold their house, and they had moved across the country to start the company.
Matt isn’t a developer, so he had to find a tech co-founder to help them build the app. They started with the “Little Engine That Could”, and they got the first three pages to work and read it to their daughter. She stopped what she was doing and listened to the story, and that’s when they knew they had it.

How it All Works

They custom compose the music and sound effects for each book. They create them at their state of the art digital studio.
A user has to have a copy of the book they want to read and the app just pairs with the book regardless of whether it’s an eBook or print book. The user just taps play on their phone and puts it down to read the book.

Novel Effect and Pediatric Development

For their third co-founder, they brought in their sister in law who was getting a PhD in teaching children with visual impairments. It was a light bulb moment for their sister in law because the idea of Novel Effect meant enabling kids with visual impairment to read and understand much more easily.
They have been passionate about education and making a positive impact on literacy and the motivation to read for kids.

Current Statistics on Successes

They focus on three core educational outcomes. The first is engagement (Are they paying attention or not?), comprehension (Do they understand what the material is, and is the music and sound effects improving their comprehension), and enjoyment (Are they enjoying? If they are then they are motivated to keep doing it).
They have a 75% improvement in engagement, and they measure that by how many people are focused and paying attention to the teacher versus being distracted.
They have seen an 85% improvement in comprehension.

Novel Effect in Speech Language Pathology

They have focused on helping secondary language learners because the system is powerful in that it responds to them positively when they say something correctly which encourages them to practice. The instantaneous feedback on how well they’re doing helps in a big way.
The biggest impact Matt has seen is with his Asian CTO who has a thick Chinese accent even though he has lived in the US for 20 years. Ever since he started working with Novel Effect, he has managed to improve in his dictation, speed of speech, and pronunciation.

The Built in Gamification

The app has a gamification aspect to it in the way a person gets the music and sound effects when they say the right words the right way.
They have thought about making the gamification more real around like giving badges and points.

Stuff in the Horizon

They have Spanish coming up and will have 30 to 40 titles. They will have Spanish enabled so a user can read a book in English and Spanish with the capability to switch back and forth.
They are also getting into TV where adults and kids will be able to role play and read from a television screen and talk to the characters who will also talk back to them.