As a PM at Apple, how would you reduce accidents with smartphones?

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As a PM at Apple, how would you reduce accidents with smartphones?

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Bobate · Answer 1 · 2021-01-31T00:05:37+0000

Assumptions:

Apple makes a lot of products, but given the question I will assume I am a PM for the ipnone
Another simplifying assumption is that t he solutionis for US
Also want to make sure we are on the samepage when we say "accidents" - accidents can be vehicle collisions, people dropping things, falling down etc. For the purpose of this question(and fun :) ) we can define accidents as people dropping their phone
Also will expand on the definition of 'reduce' keeping the end goal in mind. Let's say that we want to reduce the negative experience of dropping your phone.

So reframe the question as - "How do we make sure users who drop their phones dont have a negative experience?"

Dropping your phone can happen to anyone so this is a common problem. However, a phone is more important to some people than others. Let's segments users based on what they do which might influence h ow important their phone is for them.

Office workers
School/College kids
Stay at home moms
Service industry
Gig workers
Retired seniors
Small business owners

For office workers and school/college kids a phone is important but not as important for service industry/gig workers. They have access to other devices and mostly stay at work or school where they have access to the internet and other means of communication. Stay at home moms and seniors also rely on their phone for communication, however if they drop their phone they are not i n an urgent need toreplace it. I'll create a matrix of user group vs urgency and relative importance to prioritize the user group.

Office workers	Low	Not urgent
School/College kids	Low	Not urgent
Stay at home moms	Med	Not urgent
Gig workers	High	Urgent
Retired seniors	Med	Not urgent
Service industry	Med	Not urgent
Small business	Med	Not urgent

I'd like to focus on solutions for gig worker as they rely on their phone heavily for their livlihood and their need is urgent.

Some painpoints:

Lose access to your gig job accounts
Lose access to the money earned in those accounts
Lose photos, contacts
Unable to do your job as they need their phone for location, maps and accepting gigs

Some solutions:

Phone replacement insurance program
Hardware phone protections - eg. phone case that become parachute or airbag for phone
High end version of phone thats more rugged (like the Nokia 6600)
A way to emulate your phone on any other internet connected device. Eg,. via a USB plug in

# 1 involves some insurance claim process that does n ot meet user painpoints. As I am a PM on iPhone SW, #2,3 is not in my scope. #4 holds promise but needs feasibility assesment. Expanding on requirements for #4

HW requirements - Need GPS for location, Wifi connection, battery for portability.
SW - confirm identity, run gig apps

Assume the solution is a combination of a HW piece that works as a GPS+ 4G hotspot and a Website that once loggedinto 'emulates your phone'.

Using this solution a gig worker could be up and running in a few minutes as long as they have access to a secondary computing device such as a laptop. The solution is supported by a cloud based service that creates a 'virtual' version of the phone that the laptop can connect to.

As a first step, I'd work on a prototype to confirm feasibility. Is this solution technically possible? Once feasibility is confirmed, i'd work on a ROI analysis to make sure that the effort and time required to build the solution is realistic given the outcome. Next step would be to develop an MVP for beta users.

Caveats - Not sure if the target market size is worth the effort. I assumed that the need would be immediate, but I'd also validate this assumption to make sure that the solution complexity makes sense.