[chime]

I guess I'm doing it for the end-goal's sake. I really do want people with disabilities to be able to communicate better, including my own cousin. As long as my bills are being paid (regardless of the source of income), I don't need any rewards. I'm not a saint or anything - I just don't want to deal with the overhead of funding, grants, scholarships, sales, marketing, clients, customers. I want to make a usable, innovative product and keep improving it. A few years ago my preliminary version got #1 on HN ( http://chir.ag/projects/ktype/ ) and since that day I have been working hard to change my life so I could work on it full-time. Took over a year but I can finally do it now, so I'm very happy.

[msg]

You might not want "customers" but nothing will help you innovate like users. Where I work we get mountains of feedback and use it to justify new features and to prioritize bug fixes.

[chime]

I wholeheartedly agree and I intend to start working with my potential users very soon.