My Phone WANTS Me to Text and Drive
While I was driving to work today, my pants pocket buzzed. “Incoming,” my iPhone nudged, and then awaited my response. And I knew my iPhone wasn’t going to tell me again, whatever the message, until I pulled it out of my pocket and looked at its screen. I had three choices:
- Pull my phone out of my pocket, look at the message, and respond.
- Pull my phone out of my pocket, look at the message, and then respond once I parked.
- Leave my phone in my pocket and wait until I parked to look at the message and respond.
Option #1 clearly holds the most danger, as the many “Don’t Text and Drive” campaigns attest. Options #2 and #3, however, require reliance on my increasingly less reliable memory to remember to respond to a buzz that had been stilled for a longer time than my short-term memory can contain. I have a hard enough time remembering my destination while driving, as my passengers will lament, and that seems a tad more important when captaining a car than remembering that my phone once upon a time wiggled. Do you see my dilemma?
As a responsible husband, father, driver, and member of society, I selected Option #3, which is clearly the safest yet just as clearly offers the greatest chance of a tardy response. I mean, if I didn’t remember to check my phone when I parked, it could be hours before I just happened to check my phone to see the neglected message. OK, so Words with Friends and Letterpress guarantee it wouldn’t be hours, but you get my point.
My phone should treat me better than that. You see, it knows that I’m in a car by the speed its GPS picks up. It knows when I’m parked by my relatively ponderous pace. It could buzz me anew once I’ve parked. In fact, it could wait to buzz me until I’ve parked. I imagine a setting that says “Ignore these type of messages while I’m driving.” True, the phone doesn’t know if I’m driving or riding, but it could ask.
When we talk about context with user experiences, we usually think about targeting ads based on location. Contextual use cases span so much more, though, especially when you’re more willing to extrapolate things like velocity. Phones can improve the user experience while making us all safer by not encouraging me to text and drive.
You need a #4: Buy a google car which will drive for you while you SMS. That’s what I do.
That’s why you’re the best!
Texting is an efficient communications medium, a powerful fund raising tool and even a crime reporting method – to name a few upsides. But I also think technology should be able to help us facilitate unplugging – especially when driving down the highway in 5000 pounds of steel and glass.
After my three year old daughter was nearly run down by a texting driver in 2009, I invented an app to manage texting whether the user is at home, in the office or on the road. Its simple and easy to schedule “texting blackout periods” with all notifications silenced so you can focus on the task at hand without feeling disconnected from your social network. Teens can study or sleep and adults…well maybe we can remind ourselves that technology should be complimenting our lives and not the other way around.
Erik Wood, owner
OTTER app
do one thing well… be great.