The following statistics are from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and represent issues that my team attempted to address when adding features to the VQ Driver app. Because our app was used by many thousands of fleet drivers each day, our potential to have a positive impact on each of these statistics was significant.
That's the number of fatalities from distracted driving in 2020. Texting and phone usage was a major contributor to that total.
Here's the number of speed-related fatalities from 2019. The total number of injury accidents and amount of property damage related to speeding is hard to imagine.
That's the percentage of those killed in 2019 who were not buckled up. While thankfully seatbelt usage in the U.S. remains high, unrestrained drivers experience some of the worst injuries from collisions.
UI simplicity was key in the VQ Driver app—both as a means of avoiding distraction and out of respect for driver's time and attention. When drivers first connected or returned to a DDP-enabled vehicle, they'd receive a brief primer about the feature. Before beginning their first DDP trip, drivers would need to either acknowledge the new feature, or tap a link to view an explainer about what to expect. In addition to the design, I provided much of the microcopy for these interactions.
One of the elements of DDP that I advocated for and was eventually included in the app was emergency unlock. In the unlikely case that a vehicle was involved in an accident or a major malfunction occurred, drivers might need to circumvent the DDP feature and unlock their phone while the vehicle was out of park. To prevent the unlock feature from being abused, I paired it with a confirmation prompt letting drivers know that use of the feature was tied to a supervisor notification. This was further tied to a 5-second timer allowing drivers to cancel an unintended emergency unlock.
Going a step further from the seatbelt chime that exists in most vehicles, the SDS feature partially disabled a vehicle by locking the shifter until its driver was buckled. If a driver unbuckled during a trip and continued driving, this would trigger a post-trip notification indicating that the behavior had been detected and logged.
One part of this feature that I discovered from speaking with one of the firmware engineers was the ability to detect attempted shifting while the transmission shifter was locked. This allowed us to send a push notification to the driver in the event they were unaware or had forgotten why the shifter was not working. This was an example of a complex interaction that benefited greatly from my ability to storyboard and generate video demonstrations.
The Driver app was easily the most challenging project that I undertook at Derive Systems. The technical hurdles and requisite design compromises alone made it difficult. Compounding those challenges was navigating the complex relationship between a highly-sought-after driver workforce and their employer, eager to find a balance between implementing safety features and keeping drivers happy. This political balance on the customer side made it especially difficult to advocate for adequate testing of feature updates, and I learned a great deal about being successful in that through my collaboration with product management, sales, and executive leadership.