Samsung's Wemogee App Uses Emoji as Speech Therapy

For most people, replacing a word with an emoji is a fun gimmick that saves time typing. For users of Samsung's Wemogee chat app, yet, emoji could unlock a new method of online conversation.

That'south because Wemogee is aimed at people who suffer from aphasia, a neurological disorder that prevents them from producing and understanding spoken communication. To create the app, Samsung worked with speech therapists who came up with emoji-only versions of 140 common phrases. Users with aphasia tin chose what they want to say from a list of visual options, and the app translates them into text for recipients without aphasia.

For example, the phrase "Would you like to go to the beach with me?" is transformed into a single text bulletin containing iv emoji, and if you respond with an enthusiastic "Ok!," the sender will get a single "ok" hand sign emoji.

Samsung Wemogee app

Samsung has performed beta testing of the Wemogge app in Italy, where more than 200,000 people suffer from aphasia, normally equally a result of a traumatic brain injury.

"The aphasic patients sympathise emojis because they represent all aspects of the emotions," Francesca Polini, a voice communication therapist and professor at the University of Milan, said in a argument. "At the stop of the communication, it'south useful to have a clearly defined list of phrases related to immediate needs, in guild to avert having to call back too much."

Wemogee is similar to the predictive text features you might detect in your messaging app of choice, including iMessage and Facebook Messenger, both of which advise emoji for sure words. The app will exist bachelor for download on Android devices this week, TechCrunch reports, and an iOS version is in the works.