Pixie Dust Technologies' 'VUEVO' Surpasses 300 Corporate Adoptions

Pixie Dust Technologies, Inc. (Headquarters: Chuo-ku, Tokyo; Representative Directors: Yoichi Ochiai, Taiichiro Murakami; hereinafter 'PxDT') is pleased to announce that the number of corporate adoptions for its real-time speech recognition, translation, and AI meeting minutes service, 'VUEVO,' has surpassed 300.

Solving Communication Barriers Across Various Fields VUEVO is an AI speech recognition tool that uses proprietary wireless microphones and a dedicated application to transcribe conversations among multiple people in real-time, visualizing 'who' is saying 'what.' By integrating three functions—reasonable accommodation for the hearing impaired, real-time multilingual translation in 20 languages, and instant AI-generated summary minutes after meetings—into a single product, it is being adopted by diverse organizations, including companies, medical institutions, and welfare corporations.

While momentum for promoting DE&I (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) in companies is growing, challenges remain on the ground, such as 'employees with hearing impairments cannot grasp meeting content in real-time,' 'communication with foreign employees or overseas clients takes time,' and 'record-keeping tasks consume massive man-hours, putting pressure on core duties.' The background to VUEVO being chosen by 300 organizations lies in the field-level need to balance diversity and productivity within daily operations alongside the promotion of DE&I.

Three Values That Transformed the Workplace [Value 1: Communication Participation for Hearing-Impaired Employees] Supporting 'meeting participation' for hearing-impaired employees and increasing their organizational contribution. As part of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare's 'FY2024 Self-Reliance Support Equipment Demonstration and Dissemination Support Model Project,' PxDT participated in a 'Work Support Project Utilizing Self-Reliance Support Equipment' conducted by the Techno-Aid Association. Takenaka Corporation served as a monitor company, and the effectiveness of VUEVO in the workplace environment was verified by a cross-departmental team including speech-language-hearing therapists. The published results report indicated that evaluations regarding speaker identification and conversation understanding improved by 20-30% from the perspectives of both the individuals themselves and their supervisors/colleagues. Furthermore, the burden of grasping information independently decreased by 83.8%, and the amount of information obtained from surrounding conversations at their desks increased by 90.9%. Results also showed that the number of remarks made during meetings increased by 80% based on the individuals' own perceptions. This change does not just mean numerical improvement. It has great significance in that employees who previously felt 'I don't know what is being said' can now understand the flow of meetings and express their own opinions. VUEVO functions as a tool to increase work participation and contribution by increasing the amount of information, supporting the realization of a 'workplace where one can work with peace of mind' for hearing-impaired employees.

[Value 2: Multilingual Translation with Overseas Bases and Foreign Employees] Realizing medical care that transcends language barriers through multilingual translation. Hitohito Care Clinic (Director: Kazuhito Nakamura), located in Ikuno-ku, Osaka, is a medical institution situated in an area considered to have the highest ratio of foreigners in Japan, with patients of over 80 nationalities visiting. Previously, consultations with foreign-speaking patients were handled using computer typing or translation devices, but each input created pauses in conversation, making it difficult to conduct consultations while observing the patient's facial expressions. After introducing VUEVO and VUEVO Display, consultation time was reduced to about one-third of the previous time through real-time translation. By having the doctor speak while looking at the patient's face, and having those words translated and displayed in real-time, communication that not only 'conveys' but 'connects' has been realized. This is a case where the burden of multilingual support was significantly reduced without lowering the quality of consultations.

[Value 3: Efficiency in Meeting Minutes (Productivity Improvement)] Reducing meeting minutes creation time by up to 80% or more. The democratization of records changes organizations. At the social welfare corporation Subaru, specific staff members spent 1-2 hours creating minutes for every meeting, which had been a long-standing issue of work concentration on specific personnel and the existence of meetings where records could not keep up. There were also complaints about the quality of information sharing because the intent of the remarks was not sufficiently reflected in the minutes. After introducing VUEVO, the time required for creating minutes was reduced to about 10-20 minutes, achieving a time reduction of up to 80% or more. Due to high-precision speaker identification using proprietary microphones and AI summarization, summary-type minutes are generated immediately after the meeting ends, making it possible for staff not well-versed in IT to operate it. Chairman Wada of the corporation evaluated it, saying, 'We can now smoothly create minutes that we used to put off, and we can take the next actions faster.' With the elimination of the personalization of minutes creation, meetings that were not previously recorded are now subject to recording, strengthening the information-sharing foundation of the entire organization.

Future Outlook Based on the voices from the field accumulated through the adoption track record of 300 organizations, PxDT will continue to proceed with development for further product updates. In the three areas of reasonable accommodation for the hearing impaired, communication support in multilingual environments, and operational efficiency, we will evolve VUEVO as 'workplace conversation infrastructure' and contribute to the realization of an inclusive society where everyone can work proactively.