Thank the Muro Box Team for Making the App More Accessible for Blind People (Belgium)
Geert Vanpee
Hi, my name is Geert Vanpee. I have been a bike repairer for 1 year and 4 months now. Before this job, I was a programmer for about 17 years, but things got too stressful and I couldn’t get along with the many changes within the IT sector. At last, I decided to leave this field and do something I really love to do.
Why do I love music boxes?
Well, as a little child, I had a ”programmable” xylophone which was driven by a big cylinder with slidable pins. Unfortunately, I was very careless at that time and so the poor thing broke shortly after I got it. But, the concept of (programmable) music boxes was born in my mind and I always had fascination for the mechanism inside a toy music box.
My interest in mechanical items must have been given to me by my father, because even as a little child, I attended my father’s work on the car or on a motorcycle or something like that. People began to understand that I loved mechanical items and whenever they had something they didn’t need anymore, they gave it to me so that I could play with it. That triggered my interest even more, so I got to know how things were built and how they work.
As I grew up, I started to collect old mechanical clocks and try to repair them if they stop working. My sister gave me a toy music box for my 31th birthday. The collecting of mechanical music boxes started off.
Even nowadays, I still like the mechanism of toy music boxes; I therefore have a little collection of those music boxes on a desk here. And whenever I saw a music box one could program using paper strips, I was interested, but unfortunately, that method was not usable for blind people like me and well, I discarded the idea of buying it.
How did I find the Muro Box?
Back in June 2020, I was forced to reduce my social life due to Covid. So, I sat down one day and remembered a programmable xylophone toy I had back when I was a child.
I looked on the internet to see if something like that still was available, but didn’t find anything but programmable music boxes using a paper strip. Being a blind person, punching holes in a paper strip wasn’t really an option; so I was wondering if there was some other kind of programmable music box and all of a sudden, I discovered something called, ”Muro Box”.
How I decided to support the Indiegogo
campaign of Muro Box in 2020?
On their Indiegogo campaign project page, it seemed like Muro Box was developed by very passionate people who wanted to make the best out of it. So, after reading everything I could about Muro Box, watching videos of Muro Box playing and installing and trying the app, I was still hesitating a bit (because of the price, but also because I didn’t have any experience in backing any kind of campaign).
However, one day, I couldn’t resist and back the Indiegogo campaign anyway.
I received better customer service than I expected!
So, from that moment on, I was able to post comments, read updates, ask questions… And without any kind of expectation, I made a suggestion to make the app more user-friendly for blind people, never thinking of getting any response at all.
To my big surprise however, I got a very kind response and my suggestion was taken very seriously; without any hesitation, they did something about it and made the app very usable.
Before the Muro Box was shipped to me, I enjoyed reading their detailed and regular email updates.
Before the Muro Box was shipped to me, I enjoyed reading their detailed and regular email updates.
Well, things went on that way:
- They made their updates even more descriptive by adding text descriptions to images and videos;
- They kindly answered all my questions about the workings of Muro Box;
- They didn’t mind when I sent them a survey via mail instead of via the official survey page (which wasn’t very usable for blind people);
- They sent me the user’s manual in pdf format so that I could read it better;
- Every single response I got was kindly, understanding, passionate about what they were doing.
So, as time went on, they kept on improving their product letting all backers know about the progress in regular updates and they did not mind about delaying their shipment and delivery to really get the best out of it.
What Do I think about the Muro Box
after receiving it?
So, when my Muro Box arrived, it was 11 months later than it was supposed to arrive. I really learned to have patience, but the best thing about it is: they used those 11 months extra to resolve problems, to improve sound quality… And really, this is noticeable when looking at the final product.
What an amazing little music box; it is simple (no display, no touch interface, no irritating beeps, no complex setup required, only one control knob), it is sturdy and very well built … And last but not least: the sound is as close as you can get to an authentic mechanical music box, not catchable in an audio recording, but when hearing it live, IT JUST BLOWS ME AWAY!!!
So, I really am very satisfied with such a great result; when reading all of their email updates and replies to my questions, it seemed like they have done their very best for it, but now that I have the Muro Box here at home, it is clear to me that the Muro Box team really DID their very best! I want to thank them very much for all of their designing, creating, and producing such a lovely product!
I made a special melody for the Muro Box team:
2020/12/26
The Muro Box Story is made up of the essence
from six different melodies!
- Eine Kleine Nachtmusik: This melody inspires the founder (Dr. Feng) to invent the Muro Box, a mechanical music box that can multiple meaningful melodies for his wife (the co-founder of the Muro Box).
- Mary Had a Little Lamb: When Dr. Feng decided to invent Muro Box,his first DIY project to prove his concept was creating an electronic xylophone in 2016, and this melody was recorded in his live demo video.
- Vivaldi’s Four Seasons-Spring: This melody was used in one of early prototypes’ live demo videos.
- Pachelbel’s Canon: This melody was used in one of the later stage prototype live demos. Geert improvised its original melody a bit in this mashup melody.
- Yiruma’s River Flows in You: This melody marks a very important milestone in the product development because the sound quality has been improved significantly when the Muro Box prototype played this melody.
- Ed Sheeran’s Perfect: This famous love song’s melody was presented in the live demo video of the Muro Box when the team introduced their new USB midi input feature.
