Technopreneurship Blog

[technoblogbybaldwin]

Justified fear

Discovering the experiences drivers encounter every time they travel gave us some pretty great insights. As we learned variety of perspective, almost half of them always wants to avoid traffic officers and only wants to rely on automatic control. We may know why this discretion exists, and this might also add some outlooks to include on my life as I grow. This might be a result of knowing who really is the boss of the road. Yes, they hold the wheels of their vehicles but they don’t hold the strings of the law. I really understand this sentiment even as a student since this perspective is just like me taking a test and want to avoid the facilitator’s eyes or hoping the teacher does not check on me while taking the test. I shall always know my position as it might cause me an arm and a leg.

[technoblogbybaldwin]

Acumens

Hearing the traffic officer’s judgements and decision when manually controlling the traffic gives us plenty of ideas to fulfill to our study. When they say that when manually controlling traffic. This was unexpected as I always thought that they just controlling traffic in an impromptu way so it will go smoothly. I was not that far from the truth though as they also said that they check vehicle densities and the duration of the lane waiting. When learning these choices they made, I was pondering how impactful their decision they make to regulate traffic. They might mess things up or whatnot. This gives me anxiety and also satisfaction as I might soon join the workforce, I will also select choices that may help me and the company or completely setting us back because of that. There are many decision to select, but only handful of options are viable.

[technoblogbybaldwin]

Commuter

Learning the perspectives of some traffic officers, It presented several interesting details. As only a commuter and a student, I believed that traffic only occurs on because of accidents/repairs on the road or in rush hours. But, there are actually more into it. It is traffic prone area for a reason since the connected road or intersection is a heavy traffic prone area. It is expected to be traffic on that place because it is made to handle traffic. This actually changes some of my beliefs as I take traveling for granted. I can commute because I could. I never really thought about these little details that could factor traffic conditions. Now, maybe whenever I would detour on a traffic prone area, I should rule that element when figuring out how much longer I would wait on traffic that may result of me being late and whatnots.

[technoblogbybaldwin]

Helpful observers

If I was a driver, I might always avoid traffic enforcers as possibly could due to the assumption that they are corrupted. But, knowing some perspectives on other drivers, drives my mindset away a little bit. As we heard some of driver’s outlook on officers, it help us understand more of these traffic enforcers. Drivers told us that they actually prefer automatic control than manual traffic control from officers due to the fact that they don’t want to blame the traffic to these officers. But still, they want these traffic enforcers to be present at the road at all times just for some supervision. This took my interest as I always thought of officers as a thing to keep your distance. Drivers might see them as a walking and talking surveillance. They are still the first person you want to approach when you have a problem on the road so avoiding them might not be always the case.

[technoblogbybaldwin]

The Unnoticed Traffic

All of my life, I believed that heavy waiting times on traffic occurs on rush hour settings. Interviewing traffic officers and drivers really unveiled some salient realizations. Well, it is true that long waiting times on traffic takes place on rush hours but non-rush hour traffic should be mentioned too. It is a surprise to me when learning drivers also suffers from a low degree traffic on non-rush hour settings. When I am commuting, I always want to avoid the rush hour times as these are very annoying. But drivers got it worse as they only not suffer from rush hour, but also on these little traffic and traveling on to traffic prone areas that might be long enough for them to disturb their composure. Honestly, I have been always want to drive on the road, especially on highways. But knowing these details, I might need to reconsider.

[technoblogbybaldwin]

Authority’s authority

We know that traffic officers are the authority of the road but there is still more into it than you thought. Validating some of our key points opens up valuable information from traffic officers. Since I became a regular commuter, I always thought of traffic officers as the absolute authority of the road. Yes, there might be higher ups managing them but at least they have enough power to rule the road, but I was wrong when I heard their side of the story. Learning that they cannot even control traffic lights as these systems were installed by an independent companies, I was surprised. Thinking traffic officers were in control was a mistake. They are a control within the control. They are just employees of a much larger systems. It changed my perspective as them being the authority, to become just anyone of the drivers; a simple workers.

[technoblogbybaldwin]

Perspectives

Honestly, hearing driver’s resentment to unbefitting traffic officers was interesting. Throughout the validation, we gain some enlightenment from drivers on how to approach traffic and traffic officers. They say, they encounter on upwards of 7+ traffic lights and traffic officers when driving. These slows down their travel as some officers might literally stop them. I was always think that these officers are corrupted with power and money that they’re just waiting for the opportunity to milk drivers some cash. As I heard from a driver’s stand point on traffic officers, my thought process changed. They say, traffic officers are sometimes the most nicest people they meet from their tiring travel duties. They sometimes make special treatment to them and drivers really appreciate it. That is why they are very angry to officers that are unfit to the job. They only want to travel quietly as drivers are not the most energetic people on the industry. This changed my perspective to officers as I only see them as cashgrab machine whenever I encounter them on the road. They are conditionally nice!

[technoblogbybaldwin]

Driver’s side of the coin

Drivers are the direct customer of this project and their opinions should always be heard.

Validating some key points presented us some very insightful information from drivers. These guys spend their day on the road but being always on the road presented some emotional impact such as frustrations and disappointments. That is why they always wanted to travel efficiently and smoothly. The way they hate traffic was honestly new to me as I am just a commuter. I took drivers for granted but that changed when I heard their passionate vexations. I was even considering getting some driver’s license just for the sake of having it but I never even thought about the people who holds these license holds these kinds of emotional disturbance. Thus, innovating solutions that help these drivers are really a priority to say the least.

[technoblogbybaldwin]

Unseen Verdicts

Validating process helps us learn the traffic officer’s judgment while on manual control. It was systematic but conditional. These judgements gave us an idea on what to create for the adaptive control counterpart. Looking back to the questions we ask, it were fine but still a lot of holes to fill. We asked factual and practical questions only. If we factor in their emotions and conditions when actually doing their manual control, their judgment might be completely different or there’s slight difference in decision making at least. These consequences were not factored in when asking the questions since we were only looking for hard facts. This might have a impact to their adaptive reasonings or not.

[technoblogbybaldwin]

The 21st Century Problem

Traffic might be the most problematic issue of the modern era.

As we validate key points of the study Adaptive Traffic Control System, we learnt the frustrations of drivers on dealing with traffic. It got me thinking, it was not that taxing to me as a student even though I have a fair share of my commutes. Definitely a huge step to take when transitioning from a student to work force point of view. This inspired me to innovate solutions for this worldwide traffic issue.

[technoblogbybaldwin]

Start of the second half of the semester!!

7+ entries will be created after this post

[technoblogbybaldwin]

An other pitch

I am a member of a group but I do have my own pitch to share. This pitch has already validated on some extent since I already asked some target costumers and authorities. The pitch is called Barangay Request System, it’s an app that allow residents to request a barangay documents(barangay clearance, indigency etc.) and also communicate with the barangay hall through the use of smartphone, this will lessen the inconvenience of going to the barangay hall itself and avoid unfruitful ventures. We asked some staffs on Brg. Macasandig on how their document request process and IT department. We learned that they do things traditionally or manually. They record things on paper and some electronically through Microsoft Excel and they offer first come first serve on giving documents. We saw this as an opportunity to raise their efficiency and effectiveness since our system will transfer that transaction on a more organize and easy-navigational manner. We also asked some residents on how they feel if they only need to communicate through an app for all of their transactions and we learned that most of them that goes to barangay to request a document, only went their once or twice in their entire lives and would be happy to do their requests remotely. Both parties, residents and barangay authorities, benefits to this system. Further validation is required as we still don’t know how much this will impact a barangay. We knew that they hire a staff to do this kind of job so stealing their work might or might not be a problem. 

[technoblogbybaldwin]

Bleak times

As our validation goes by, it more looked like we are far from the true purpose of our product. The further we validate our hypothesis, the demand of our product falls. As we learn about the farmer’s struggles and hardship, the more you can appreciate them and want them to help but actually, they do not need the absolute help in terms of technical terms at least. The functions we offer is not noble enough to them to acknowledge. It seems to us, or at least to me, is that our product is unnecessary. For example, if a certain vegetable does not yield its full potential, does that mean it is not productive? We discovered that even this vegetable is lower quality, it is still be useful to them at some extent. It looks like the purpose of our proposed product does not outweighs the problems if ever fixed. Some of this issues they need to address are not something we can solve like natural disasters. We might decide to move on to other field to offer product and services if this is how it turns out. 

[technoblogbybaldwin]

Other side of the same coin

At this point we decided to include costumers on a non-professional perspective. We came up with this proposition as we validate our product that it has a demand to regular growers and we can add some features that targeted to them. As we attempt to validate this hypothesis, we discovered that they were as passionate as a professional farmers too. They were exited to grow their own plants but lacks the experience. The function we added to our product throughout this point was a soil moisture measuring tool for proper irrigation treatments. We decided to add this as we learned that some farmers have bad yields when not properly maintained, especially on irrigation. This function can be very helpful to the non-professional growers who attempts to grow crops or plants that needs accurate treatments. 

[technoblogbybaldwin]

Attempting to fill the gap...failed

As we further validate our proposition, the gaps we need to fill...were some sort of an illusion. We continued to interview and asked about their daily lives as farmers, what crops they grow and stuff. These information we gathered were enough for us to conclude what functions we need to include to our product. It went wrong because we did not really grasp the problem they have at that point. We are still on the preliminary stages, or “knowing each other” stage. We continued to put function that may or may not be needed to them. If you look at it, It sounds like we were the one deciding what problems they were suffering as how this validation process develops. Looking back, validation of our product should focus on the costumers and not the product. As what I’ve learned on class that a product exist when there’s a costumer and not the other way around. We could’ve further inquire their specific struggles as a farmer and not just as a person. We could’ve ask more about their technical difficulties and what problems that needs to addressed immediately. These action may lead us to better understanding their hardships and passion as a farmer.

[technoblogbybaldwin]

What's lacking

Upon inquiring our potential costumers, the farmers, we discovered that the product we were proposing to them does not have clear objective to solve their problem. We went interviewing without considering specific problems to fix for them. Our product we proposed were vague as we thought that it will just solve their problem on its own upon presenting the idea we have but we were far from right. Our product called AGRICULTool, which function initially allows you to browse agricultural tips and information for it to help them ease their jobs, was too unnoble and quite not needed but there are still a demand and use. It even cause us more problems than solving one. Now, thinking about it, we could’ve asked first what problems they need to address and resolve immediately. If they presented us with many issues, we could’ve rank them from highest priority to low and thinking objectively on what problem on their field that should be needed to fix.

[technoblogbybaldwin]

Unfair treatment

As we know, we get our food and grains from either groceries or public markets. We rarely think what is happening behind the scenes between farmers and corporations. Upon exploring farmers more, we discovered that due to having middle mans between farmers and corporations, they tend to cut their prices lower than it should be. The process of selling their crops is as follows: Farmers>Middleman>Corporation/Market. Because of this, farmers get less than they are supposed to have. Corporations and middleman exploiting their jobs since farmers can not do anything against it. That’s why more and more farmers/growers sell their products themselves, directly to market. This avoids them cutting their prices and getting fair exchange. But, this is just a band aid solution to what’s really happening between market and farmers. Government should take this to account as farmers and their products are the backbone of our country’s cousin and export too. If you can observe, prices of rice is much more expensive than before, but this does not mean farmers get increase payment too. Exploitation of needs are happening and authorities are the one who’s doing it. Farmers needs attention more than anyone right now.