NEED OF EFFORTELY
The story behind
Effortely.
I went to a police station for some work.
I came back with an idea I couldn't leave alone.
WHERE IT STARTED
Three people.
One piece of paper.
This is my story, from the police station to the build you can try today.
That day at the police station.
I went to a police station for some work. While I was there, I saw three deaf people trying to explain their case to a police officer. The officer wasn’t getting what they were trying to say.
I went over and tried to communicate. They understood English, so somehow I managed to get what their issue was and wrote it down on paper.
I also tried Gemini Live with the camera. It kept bugging out and saying it was too fast. In the end, writing things down was what helped us get somewhere.
One of the guys also showed me something about accessibility requirements at police stations and hospitals. That stayed with me. These are places where people really need to be understood, and the staff are already stretched.
I kept thinking about that situation. What if there was something there that could help both sides communicate? Something that didn’t depend on a random person walking in and trying to figure it out. That’s where the idea for Effortely came from.
Then I actually tried to build it.
Honestly, it was a mess. I didn’t have the resources I wanted. I wanted a Meta-compatible avatar so I could make it workable, but that didn’t work out. Eventually, I tried a VRM model instead.
I only had my MuseCode subscription and ChatGPT Plus. Midway through, my MuseCode subscription finished. I renewed it, and then the weekly limit was done too. Unlucky me.
The reset was on 2 November, at 5 in the morning. So I waited for it, then went back and tried to complete the project.
Slowly, I started losing hope in it. But I did what I had to do, kept trying, and somehow managed to get here. There’s still work to do, but here it is. Effortely.
And the name?
Effortely was a name I had reserved for another project. I already had the social media usernames locked in too. But it suited this one so well that I used it here.
So that’s the story. It started with three people trying to explain their case, an officer trying to understand, and me with a piece of paper.
WHERE I WANT TO TAKE IT
Off the browser.
Onto the desk.
I don't want Effortely to stop at a website. I can see it as a small device sitting on a desk, ready when someone needs to communicate.
These are my hardware mockups. The direction I want is local models, including a local LLM, helping both sides communicate in real time. The device and that local-model setup are the next idea to work towards.
The conversation should go both ways.
Someone signs, the device helps turn it into text or speech. Someone replies, and the avatar signs it back. That is what I want to work towards, running locally on the device.
Getting there means testing with deaf signers, improving the language support, and proving that it works in the places where people would actually use it. The mockups show the shape of that idea.
THE HOPE FOR IT
In the places we already go.
Police stations were the starting point. I can see the need in so many other places too.
Police stations
I keep coming back to where this started. Someone should be able to explain why they came in, understand the questions being asked, and check that their words came through properly.
Hospitals
At a reception desk or during a conversation with staff, even explaining what you need can become difficult. I want Effortely to help with that exchange, with room for people to review and correct it.
Other public places
Government counters, public forums, help desks. Anywhere in India where someone has something to say and the person across the desk doesn’t know their language. That’s the direction I want to take this.
FOR NOW, HERE IT IS