Keith Kirkland

Haptic designer
Keith Kirkland is the cofounder of WearWorks, a company that builds products and experiences that communicate information through touch.

Why you should listen

Navigation is inherently visual, and nowhere is that more clear than for the 285 million people in the world living with a visual impairment. With WAYBAND, a wrist-wearable haptic navigation device for the blind and visually impaired, WearWorks has created and patented an intuitive way to guide a person to a destination using vibration, without the need for any visual or audio cues. In 2017, WAYBAND was used to help a person who is blind run the first 15 miles of the NYC marathon without sighted assistance.

Kirkland is a public speaker, mechanical engineer, accessories designer and industrial designer with experience developing innovation-based concepts and experiences. He has worked with organizations ranging from the MET Museum, The Cooper Hewitt Design Museum, Unilever, Futureworks, Mini Cooper, Discovery Channel, Dropbox, The Yokohama Government, Coach and the National Science Foundation.

Keith Kirkland’s TED talk