Week 9 - Speed Mentoring

The speed mentoring experience was informative and beneficial. We put a lot of time and effort into preparing for the two-minute pitch and creating an informative and concise presentation for the mentors. Our objective was to convey the problem of distracted driving in a clear and efficient manner, illustrating statistics about automobile accidents, explaining factors that lead to car accidents, as well as describing how we will go about tackling the problem, and introducing Yumi; the car companion to help keep drivers safe.

The main insights we gained from our interviews were:

1. Human-Centered, Situated Perspective - Focus on the user and put them in the center:

• Behavior change - how to create an attachment between the driver and the physical object. By connecting to the object, the driver will want to drive better to please Yumi and, in turn, get positive feedback.

• Make a point to emphasize Yumi's companionship aspects; how will Yumi be there for the driver not just on a technical level of distraction - alerts, but also on a personal/emotional level.

• There is a time gap between receiving the alert and changing the behavior. Drivers continue to do certain things despite knowing that they are wrong - how can we make them stop?

2. Feedback:

• A gap between annoying the user and alerting them to the problem

• Notification fatigue

3. Eye Detection/Gaze Detection:

• Still not enough, what else are we offering? What is our value proposition?

• Red ocean: big competition, other companies trying to solve the same problem; Mobileye, GM, etc.

In light of the above points and insights, we are looking forward to moving forward and taking everything into consideration, implementing and incorporating all of these things in order to gain greater insight into the problem, improve Yumi, and better correct the issue of distracted driving 💃🏽💃🏽.