Berlin
A window between languages
A wearable translator for the places where people work side by side without a shared language. It runs entirely on the device — no phone, no connection, nothing sent anywhere.
55 mm × 30 mm × 10 mm
A wearable translator for the places where people work side by side without a shared language. It runs entirely on the device — no phone, no connection, nothing sent anywhere.
Every day, someone knows exactly what needs to be said and can't say it. A care worker who understands what a resident needs but not the shift instruction. A patient describing pain to someone who can't follow. Someone whose skill is invisible because the language isn't there yet.
ONU exists for that moment. One conversation, made possible.
The interface board carries the display, controls and microphones. The module beneath it is built around a neural processing unit — dedicated silicon for machine learning, so speech recognition and translation run fast enough for a real conversation without reaching for a server.
Both are small enough to fit inside a shell you can clip to a collar.
Speech recognition, translation and speech output all happen on a board we designed. There is no server to reach and nothing to sign into.
No recording is stored, transmitted or analysed elsewhere. For a hospital or public authority, that turns a long data-protection review into a short one.
Built for hands-on work, sterile areas and shop floors — anywhere personal phones are impractical or not permitted.
Designed to belong to the workplace and be used by whoever is on shift, so the people who need it most don't have to buy it themselves.
The hardware is our own design. The full speech-to-speech pipeline runs on the device. We're now preparing for first testing with care and manufacturing teams in Berlin, and building toward certification and further language pairs.
The pipeline, the hardware, and why running all of it on a device you can clip to a collar is the hard part.
Read →Why we're building this, who it's for, and where we want it to reach.
Read →We're looking for a small number of care, manufacturing and public-service teams to work with.
Read →
Product designer and educator, with decade long experience across consumer and industrial products for leading companies in the world. Lecturer in design and entrepreneurship in Berlin, Germany. ONU began with a simple observation — that in the places where being understood matters most, the tools we have don't reach and the best communication happens when one can express themselves through the language closest to them.
A venture built at SkalaDesign.
Get in touch, or follow the build day-to-day on Instagram.