Dell Technologies and Intel have a strong partnership, propelled by the shared belief in the power of technology to drive humanity forward. Both companies have a long-standing relationship with the Motor Neurone Disease Association (MNDA) to create technology solutions for people living with motor neurone disease (MND). MND is a neurodegenerative condition that deteriorates nerve cells that control muscles and ultimately takes away a person’s ability to speak. Even though voice banking technology is available, only about 12% of people with MND in the UK have banked their voices. In 2020, Dell Technologies and Intel came to us with a brief to find a way to get more people living with MND to bank their voices.

When MND takes away all your abilities, your voice becomes the only means to express yourself. While realizing that our voices are our identities, denial prevents newly diagnosed people from considering a future without their voice. Yet time is of the essence for people with MND. Therefore, we set out to turn voice banking into one of the first things they’d want to do and elevate the voice banking experience from its current solitary, clinical environment to an inclusive and empowering one.

We partnered with bestselling author Jill Twiss and artist Nicholas Stevenson to create a book that gently explains what it truly means to live with MND. The text itself contains all the sounds and syllables necessary to accurately bank a voice in less than 30 minutes.

Once the book was finished, we created the site hosting the story. iwillalwaysbeme.com is the first voice banking platform that allows users to bank their voices regardless of their browser or device. We adapted every page of the book so it could be read online and on any screen. Every illustration was animated, and every paragraph was placed accordingly to enrich the experience and help readers bank their voice.

Throughout every step of the development, we consulted with voice banking, speech, medical, and accessibility experts and tested the experience with people living with MND.

"I Will Always Be Me" was created with the goal of making voice banking more accessible to people living with MND, reducing the time between diagnosis and voice banking and increasing overall voice banking rate. Less than two months after launch, hundreds of digital voices had been created by reading the book, making "I Will Always Be Me" the most popular choice for voice banking in the UK today. More than 72% of those recently diagnosed with MND are now using the book to bank their voice. The campaign to launch the project generated over 1.2 million social media engagements and over 200 million PR media impressions, driving more people to bank their voices and raising awareness around MND.

iwillalwaysbeme.com follows all GDPR requirements for data privacy. Per UK healthcare requirements, funding for a digital voice can be provided by the MND Association and MND Scotland when the organizations validate that the user has been diagnosed with MND by confirming their information against the national healthcare database.

"I Will Always Be Me" was created for people with MND and their loved ones in partnership with the MND Association. Our primary audience is those with MND who can still use their voice even if speech impediments are noticeable.