InFluential_Magazine_May_June_2017

EXCLUSIVE FEATURE
improve the lives of thousands of families. It was inspiring
to learn how Rob’s love for his family and appreciation for
technology, have enabled him, and others to develop a
close personal bond with, and enhanced greater love
and deeper understanding of family.
InFluential Magazine: Would you please introduce
yourself and your daughter, Sadie, to our readers?
Rob Laffan: A native of Ireland, I’m the father of Sadie,
my six-year-old daughter who has nonverbal autism
and also the creator of TippyTalk, an app that allows
me to communicate with her. Diagnosed with autism
four years ago, Sadie attends a specific school called
Red Hill. With the help of the app and schooling,
Sadie’s communication skills have improved greatly
over the last year. She can now speak 10-12 words
and is on her way to being verbal.
InFluential: What have you learned about the challenges
associated generally with a verbal disability?
Rob: It’s more about you as the parent. I learned very
quickly that I had to adapt my life to fit in with Sadie’s.
It was upsetting at the start, but once I put my own
self-pity aside I educated myself in the many available
communication methods to try and find one that
would be suitable for Sadie.
InFluential: What was communication like between
you and Sadie before TippyTalk?
Rob: At first, we used 2-D picture cards called PECS
(picture exchange communication system). We found
it helpful at the start, but we only reached a low level
of communication with PECS and my wife and I found
ourselves every weekend printing and laminating the
following weeks batch of PECS images. There was
one upside. The use of PECS images made me realize
Sadie was a visual learner. This is where the idea of the
TippyTalk app really started to take shape.
InFluential: Do you have a technology background? If so,
how did this influence your vision to create TippyTalk?
Rob: When I returned to college in 2012 at age 35,
there was a job shortage in robotic and automation
I’m grateful
for what
I have
right now.
I measure
any success
– professionally
or personally –
through
gratitude.
Rob Laffan
engineers. After my first year of
reenrolling in college, my wife and
I learned Sadie had Autism. I made
a conscious decision then I was going
to combine technology with what I was
learning to help Sadie.
InFluential: How did you develop and test TippyTalk?
Rob: When I made a decision to help Sadie I had to
come up with an idea for my final year project in
college. I had become very proficient at a robotic
programming called SCADA. I imported hundreds of
Sadie’s images to this touch screen device call a HMI
(human machine interface.) Within the code, I attached
personalized text messages to be sent for a sequence
of Sadie’s images that she would touch.
Testing with Sadie took a few attempts, but once we
reached the interaction stage, Sadie started to send
meaningful communication within two days. From there,
I introduced it to a few other families with Autism in my
hometown and the results were very successful.
The TippyTalk prototype was a rugged device:
big and bulky and not very cost effective. The next
challenge was to figure out how to reduce the cost
and make it readily available to everyone that needed
it. The answer was to take the exact same concept and
develop it into an app.
70 FLUENTIAL MAY / JUNE 2017