Kruzr

Kruzr is a driver safety & analytics platform for motor insurers that helps them price their policies based on the user’s driving behavior & settle claims accurately.

TEAM

Ayan (CPO), Himanshu (Engineering Head), Nitin (Head of ML) ,me (head of design) along with a team of 25 engineers.

ROLE

Head of Design (responsible for all aspects of design from UI-UX, brand & collaterals)

CONTRIBUTION

1. Research, conceptualize & design the first MVP based on the business hypothesis

2. Develop Kruzr brand logo, website & collaterals

3. Redesign Kruzr mobile based on driver feedback

4. Design Kruzr pulse as per sales requirements

5. Setup & manage testing team, process

Research, conceptualize & design the first MVP based on the business hypothesis

The founding team at Kruzr had prior experience in working with road safety. They got the idea of creating a driving assistant that can use mobile technologies & design to reduce driving distractions, hence leading to a reduction in road accidents.

I joined the team when they had a technology POC & wanted to approach the product more holistically through design.

Once we had an idea about the impact, we started to work out the technology solutions & UX concept.

From the technology side, we found that mobile sensors (GPS & accelerometer data) are sufficient to differentiate between driving & non-driving state. By analysing data over the cloud, we can also provide safety alerts to drivers in almost real-time. A Voice interface can be built to give a hands-free mobile experience to users.

Armed by this knowledge we envisioned a driving assistant.

Develop Kruzr brand logo, website & collaterals

We did a quick branding exercise. We picked blue as our primary colour based on our initial liking and inspired by mobility players like Uber. We created website narratives around our driving assistant & how the insurance industry is transforming. We create micro animations on our site to showcase the nature of the assistant like proactive, calming & more.

We got a seed fund of $1.3 Million to work on our product & approach more clients in Europe. We also got selected in Insurtech accelerators by leading motor insurers validating our market hypothesis.

TESTING

For testing, we created a pool of local taxi drivers. They were eager to test Kruzr when we told them about how it can increase their safety & works on voice. We got the apps installed on their phones and guided them on how to use them. We set up periodic calls, spent time observing them while they drove as well as monitor their usage data on amplitude. We found that

Voice interactions didn’t work properly because mobile data fluctuates during driving

Drivers got irritated when Kruzr took over their phone & it often led to app uninstalls

We didn’t have enough contextual data to provide accurate safety interventions

Each driver has different preferences and skills. 1 experience product doesn’t work for all.

Our data capturing frequency and methods led to huge batter usage (~33% per hour)

Our experience didn’t work as intended on all devices & apps. Hence we had to design too many way arounds, complicating our development

These findings led to changes across our product direction, concept model & tech architecture.

Redesigning Kruzr mobile app

After seeing the results from our prolonged testing phase, we changed our product strategy from Vision first to Sales first. We started to study the market & competitors. In parallel, we deliberated over voice interface & real-time assistance. In the end, we decided to park the voice interface for a later stage. For real-time assistance, we realized that our models were highly simplified and weren’t accurate most of the time. They needed a lot more data to be accurate. So we pulled out the real-time components as well.

Our new product definition:

Kruzr mobile is a driving analytics app for drivers to make them aware of their driving behaviours and engage with their driving community.

 CURRENT STATUS

1. Ongoing Pilots with European clients

2. In talks to become a safety standard partner for a major safety org in Germany

3. In talks for White labeled solution for clients