My Role

As Co-founder & Head of Product, I wore many hats at Jaze and owned all things design and product. The Jaze technology stack consisted of hardware, firmware, software (web & mobile), in addition to a library of machine learning algorithms.

The Problem

Information asymmetry has been greatly reduced in most industries thanks to the internet, however the automotive industry still remains obstinate to change. Vehicle data sits in a black box called the "Engine Control Unit" (ECU), which can only be accessed by mechanics or gear heads through a universal port located inside the car. Studies show that in 70% of vehicle repairs where car owners admit to being uninformed about the problem, mechanics generally overcharge for repair service by up to 40%.

Our Approach

We recognized early on that there had been a lot of attempts to combat this problem of information asymmetry in car repair and maintenance. Most ventures focused on marketing and selling the device as a cool gadget. We took another approach: give the device away for free and charge a monthly/annual membership for concierge services. After preliminary user testing, we determined that our target demographic were women, aged 24 to 35, who owned a car and were financially independent. This market segment tended to be effected the most by information symmetry in vehicle repair & maintenance.


Onboarding

Since Jaze had a hardware component to its product, the onboarding process required pairing the app to a device. Also, prior to successful pairing, the device had to be plugged into a universal port on the car's interior and the car's ignition had to be turned on. Thus, we took great care in designing the onboarding process to meet the needs of all our users, without being too daunting. Once paired, the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) served as a powerful unique identifier, which enabled driver's with unprecedented access to their vehicle's data.


CUSTOMER TESTIMONIAL

"Everytime I go to the mechanic, I feel like I'm getting a raw deal. Jaze will probably save me thousands of dollars in the future by giving me access to my car's data."

Jenny Tyler, Volkswagen Owner

Dashboard

Our mission at Jaze was to turn every car into a smart car. Part of that meant giving automobiles a voice - a way to clearly communicate with drivers. But in order for cars to speak "human" we had to do some translating. The Jaze dashboard was designed to be a beacon of information for eveything related to the vehicle. Through the Bluetooth connected device, Jaze could read the car's code and using our algorithms, we could help drivers make informed decisions through actionable intelligence.


CUSTOMER TESTIMONIAL

"Where has Jaze been all these years? I still don't understand how this hasn't existed before."

Elizabeth Hoss, Toyota Camry Owner

Device

As a seed stage company with a limited budget, we opted to use off-the-shelf hardware for initial testing. Once we got a sense for what was needed in terms of functionality, we used a bare-bones approach to our hardware design - 3D printing the prototypes for our first several versions of the app - and then sending the design files and Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) to a facility for manufacturing at scale.


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