If text senders knew that their recipient was driving, would texting while driving be reduced?
The Challenge
It goes without saying that texting while driving is dangerous, yet it's still something that a third of drivers admit to doing. Looking at the solutions already out there, it seems that everything is geared towards changing the driver's behaviors. So what if we looked at the other side of the equation--the text senders who aren't driving?
Time
4-6 months
Spring - Summer, 2015
Collaborators
Team of 5
ustwo
Contributions
Ideation + Feature Identification
Lead UX and usability research
Experience design
Prototyping (paper and inVision)
Tools
Illustrator
Photoshop
InDesign
Sketch
Google Spread Sheets
Car Simulator
Solution
Drive Mode is something that turns on automatically when a person gets into their car and connects to the car's bluetooth. When someone goes to text this person, a status will indicate that this recipient is driving. Additionally, texts that are sent will be deferred until the driver has stopped the vehicle and disconnected with their car's bluetooth.
Also check out ustwo's blog for our featured blog post about 'Shift: Drive Mode'.
Automatic Drive Mode
One time setup to identify the car's bluetooth.
Automatically turns on when car starts up and the phone is paired with its bluetooth.
Never shares the location of the driver and the driver can always switch Drive Mode on or off manually.
Status
In message thread, sender can see that the recipient is driving.
More often than not, the sender will choose to not send their message, wait to send their message, or let the system defer their message.
deferring messages
Message that are sent will be deferred until the driver has stopped their vehicle and the device is disconnected from their car's bluetooth.
Force send messages
If messages need to be sent to the driver right away, texters can force send their message.
Force sent messages will be delivered and replied to using the car's bluetooth voice commands.
Process Pictures
The work below represents work that I personally were a part of or lead.
