Troels Madsen
What, Where? All Entrepreneurs
Denmark
ICT
Troels Madsen has created Wign, an online sign language dictionary where deaf people can share and search for signs. This is especially useful in higher education, where many technical terms do not have an official sign.
Ubiquitous computing, co-design, didactics and data. As a deaf student of Digital Media and Design, Troels Madsen often encounters technical and academic terms with no offical signs. Instead, his interpreter has to spell out the words or use self-invented signs. This inspired Troels to develop Wign (pronounced ‘wine’), a social sign bank where deaf people and interpreters can share and seek translations of words that are not widely used.
After going live on April 1 2016, Wign had around 2,500 users in its first month, and users are continually adding new signs. The dictionary’s success is highly largely dependent on an active user base, so in his bachelor’s project, Troels is examining how to best motivate deaf people and sign language interpreters to add new content to the site.
Business plans on the drawing board
With time, Troels hopes to attract the attention of investors who can contribute to the further development of Wign. "The project is still in its infancy, but I am looking at ways of financing Wign, so we can make it really good and inviting. I have different business models on the drawing board. I could also imagine expanding the concept to other countries."
