[ ibibio • noun]
1 / a speech, conversation, language
2 / a path towards language preservation for the marginalized
Problem
When the pandemic hit, the world shifted in an instant, sending me home to live with Mma Mary, my grandma who's only ever spoken her native tongue, Ibibio. I, never having developed fluency in our language & confronted with the reminder of mortality (thanks COVID ), grappled with the fear of language death, a universal phenomenon eliminating 1 language every 14 days.
I asked myself, how can marginalized communities to protect our languages, customs, & culture as global culture continues to converge?
solution
I founded iko, a platform to document & teach uncommon languages utilizing the power of community + machine learning. By relying upon technology to scale documentation efforts, & NLP to generate language models, we hoped to lower the cost of archiving + translating low-resource languages.
Over the course of iko's life, my team and I launched a number of product evolutions, all centered around bringing community closer & preserving our heritage.
Our basic premise
The iko mobile app is the foundation for our language preservation effort, serving as the main space in which community members can collaborate to document stories.
In our MVP application, users can share, translate, and transcribe stories.
Later versions will add features supporting story distribution & community building.
Our bespoke set of illustrations centers POC, reflecting the communities most deeply impacted by language death
During onboarding, speakers are vetted for language skill & history, providing a sampling of their speech to test fluency
Our MVP focuses on nailing three essential motions: transcription, translation, & storytelling
Users translate & transcribe audio samples to build out the data repository which feeds our translation algorithm
We gather a rich set of details from the stories, additional variables that we can play with to refine our model
Storytelling is lightweight in the current app, recognizing our hotline as a more engaging, community-embedded approach
The profile celebrates the effort of community members, showcasing their body of contributions in a shareable manner
Users can enroll & engage with multiple communities & languages, supporting intersectional stories, identities, and speaking styles
I was one of 10 design students nationwide selected to present our senior projects in a showcase featuring top industrial design professionals, firms and academics. We were nominated by our universities for having work which stood out for their bold vision and originality, providing a sampling of what’s to come in the next generation of 2020s design.
Iko was one of 9 startups selected as part of the Fall 2020 Legal Startup Garage Cohort. For 12 weeks, we received free legal counsel and services from a prominent Silicon Valley Law Firm and the law students who chose to work with us. This enabled our registration as a PBC in Delaware, as well as set down the foundation needed to legally protect our work
US HASTINGS
INSTITUTE FOR INNOVATION LAW
I was one of 26 founders who received a Black Founder grant from Sogal Foundation, the largest global platform for diverse entrepreneurs and investors. This funding enabled us to ramp up our development efforts and develop our second-iteration MVP.
We were awarded a grant for cloud credit provided in partnership from Google and the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI. This grant was created to support novel or emerging research that requires advanced computational resources, and will enable us to train our AI model using Google Cloud resources.
In February, we launched a Friends + Family funding round, facilitated by iFundWomen. We were pleasantly surprised by the huge influx of community support, nearly doubling our goal & raising ~$10,000 in less than 2 weeks.
We were invited to the Akisan Convention, an annual gathering of Akwa Ibom community (Speakers of Ibibio, our Beta language) to share about the work we've been doing. While there, we officially launched iko chat, gathering 50 users in one weekend, and we also experienced and outpouring of community support, as well as strategic connections.
I was selected to join the Contrary Fellowship in spring 2021. Contrary is a select, diverse community of the top early-career engineers, designers, and product minds working in technology. Members gain lifetime access to career making job opportunities, funding for the companies they start or join, mentorship from industry leaders, and much more.
Established & led a cross-functional team of 5, plus volunteers to launch multiple MVP experiences & community events
Developed and implemented cross-platform design system using Figma, Webflow, Adobe Creative Suite, and Origami
Led the team through 5 product iterations
Ran successful crowdfund, raising >$12,000 in under two weeks
Generated documentation (audio, transcription, translation) for 4026 Ibibio words, 17 stories, & 1680 mins of video
Abisola Olawale • SWE
Danielle Cruz • SWE
Blessing James • Community Manager
Awua Buahin • Illustrator
Theodore Horn • SWE
Design thinking & UX research
Leadership & entrepreneurship
UX/UI & Web design in Figma
Prototyping & MVP building
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