Venture · 2026
MAUTZI. Technology that listens.
A voice controlled assistance system against loneliness in care. Operated in natural language, with no technical knowledge required.
- Status
- Prototype, tested with residents
- Role
- Founding team · Product · User research
- Duration
- NBank founder scholarship, Jan to Oct 2026
The case in 60 seconds
- Problem
- Many older people feel alone. Care staff have little time for conversation.
- Audience
- Residents of nursing homes and the care staff around them.
- Our contribution
- Together with Phine from idea to prototype, supported by NBank.
- Key decision
- Speech only. Whoever can speak can use MAUTZI.
- Status
- Working prototype, tested on site with residents.
- Main limitation
- Early stage. No regular operation yet, so no reliable usage figures.
Starting point
Loneliness is one of the largest invisible problems in care. Many residents have very few conversations a day.
Digital offerings often fail with exactly this audience because they assume screens, menus and technical knowledge.
Research and insights
We spoke directly with residents and care staff in a nursing home.
The insight is simple. Interest is not the barrier, operation is. Everyone already knows how to speak.
What MAUTZI does
MAUTZI runs as a tablet app in kiosk mode. An animated cat embodies the assistant, everything is operated by speech.
One button starts the conversation, then voice activity detection takes over, no wake word needed. Plus appointments, weather, news, a media library, voice games like bingo and memory, and a drink reminder every two hours.
Technical implementation
Client server system with a server side persona. It keeps answers to one to three sentences, German only.
Two speech paths depending on the situation. Free conversation runs in realtime over OpenAI, the games use a grammar constrained recogniser with Vosk.
Test with residents
We tested the prototype on site with residents. That shows how people really speak to MAUTZI and where it still breaks down.
In parallel I modelled the service processes in my bachelor thesis and derived design requirements.
Learnings and next steps
Closeness to the people you build for beats any assumption made at a desk. Almost every good decision came from a conversation on site.
Next up are consistent voice operation, a reliable fallback and a longer trial in daily operation.
Tools and methods
- Voice interface
- OpenAI Realtime
- Vosk
- AI product development
- User research
Key insight
Closeness to the people you build for beats any assumption made at a desk. The best interface is the one nobody has to learn.