Drowsy driving is a nationwide problem that affects the well-being of many drivers. Drowsy driving becomes increasingly prevalent when looking at the truck driving industry. To combat the number of truck crashes caused by drowsy and fatigued drivers, Hit Me With Your QUEST Shot created the EyeDrive. The EyeDrive is a pair of glasses that utilizes eye tracking technology to determine user gaze and a user's eye movements, and uses this information to see if the user is falling asleep. If the user is falling asleep, the glasses will deliver a set of vibrations to bring the user back to a state of alertness. This product aims to decrease the number of accidents caused by drowsy truck drivers and the costs and deaths associated with those accidents.
The team began by interviewing frequent travelers that had a variety of different backgrounds. They distinguished four different categories of problems based on these interviews, and decided to focus on only one of them - safety while traveling. The team then implemented post-it note brainstorming and brainwriting techniques to determine multiple ideas within this realm, and then utilized a Pugh chart to decide which idea they would implement.
The team then tried multiple prototyping techniques, including pen-paper prototyping, physical prototyping, and CAD prototyping. From these prototypes, as well as feedback obtained from testing, they determined that eye tracking technology would only be on one eye (due to cost constraints), the battery pack for the system would be separately attached through a cable (users did not want battery pack close to face), and a counterweight would be added to the opposite side of the glasses to account for the weight of a data processing unit (user feedback). These are only a few changes that were made to the EyeDrive - many more were implemented based on user feedback, testing, and feasibility analysis. The team also used this feedback to integrate the concept of circular design into the EyeDrive. They decided the the EyeDrive would be able to be returned for repairs or could be returned if the user did not need them anymore. The company producing EyeDrive would then fix the EyeDrive and/or reuse spare parts.
The team also completed market and financial analysis that helped to determine the final cost of the EyeDrive, the point where the company producing the EyeDrive would break-even, and the target user versus the target consumer.
All of this information was communicated to an audience through a professional presentation as well as a technical product business proposal.