Call Me Out was a winning app idea from a from Chevrolet Global Hack-A-Thon to curb risk of distracted driving. It is an Android app, using the phone’s accelerometer, that plays recorded messages of friends/loved ones when the driver picks up the phone to answer messages or notifications, while including gamification. The goal is to change behavior using the insight of positive peer pressure to deter drivers from picking up their mobile devices.
In September, Chevrolet approached both GCCX and GMIT to ’productionize’ their 3rd party’s Proof of Concept. GMIT acted quickly to mobilize the needed resources to develop and deploy the app. The app was beta tested with GM employees February 2018.
This became a 100% in-sourced project. We saved ~$300 - $400K not having to pay external contractors. We optimized performance and productionized the app fully utilizing mobile COE (Center of Excellence) best practices (eg. battery life, location services, open source, authentication, hardening, test automation.) It uses highly scalable architecture utilizing Pivotal Cloud backend (PCF.) We implemented a state of the art User Experience Design including several enhancements planned for future (Bluetooth Detection and Peer Group Gamification.)