Posted at Jun 21/2005 06:45AM:
David Platt: I added two links to items on Pay As You Drive motor insurance, in the body of the notes:

• Tracking down those insurance costs
• Norwich Union's Pay As You Drive motor insurance.

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See Meetings

To do

• Bear in mind to maintain summaries -- bullet points of what we’re doing, see big picture in addition to detail
  • As the interviewer, give a quick summary of the points that emerge from every interview
  • Car magazines need focus- crunch info, read them, give insights.
    • Serena and I (Ruth) get the magazine stuff- we’re to go for bullet points, maybe read them in the evenings. She can also do the Pimp My Ride stuff
• Cassandra Report, by Youth Intelligence, a trend finding group- comes out next Monday
• We need to cover the literature (academic) on car culture, typified by UCL crowd for modern material culture studies. (Danny Miller, ‘car culture’ Sarah Jain of course). Michael Shanks suspects we won’t get a lot out of this.
• Broader field, academic lit on social trends in the us. Drawing on market research, futurology. Shanks will get some insight into this from Al Bergson (sociology) Paulla Ebron (CASA). Again, hunch is it won’t be too useful, but need to cover it. Also some stuff from Eric Grant and Micah Lande.
• Technology and economic trends:
  • More likely to be the area of expertise of RTNA, maybe we can ask Eric Larsen and Glenn Davis for their own insights (Chris F. Dickhaus will ask them).
  • We do have the report from BMW on European scenarios (scenario building for mobility, their ‘broad brush’ approach is pertinent to our work). Is there anything similar for the USA? Bullet point summary of key points.
• A new Schedule for project is now online, modifying dates originally in outline.
  • We need to have focused, bullet point summaries up by the meeting next week.
  • Review meeting next Tuesday.
  • We need to be able to ask, "What overall picture is emerging?" Will help us adapt the interviews and the research accordingly.
  • This also helps us communicate with RTNA, so they can see what we’re doing without having to be present.
• Go ahead and do any interviews we feel the urge to. There is no need to set an upper limit to the number of interviews; more people than anticipated seem to enjoy doing them!

Organization of wiki

David Platt said:

• Don’t hesitate to make more categories or to have a single page in several categories
• We have a single page to link all bullet point summaries to.
• Putting time into the forum really pays off, because it makes what’s already there make sense, makes it more helpful, and more accessible. Be sure to link what you do into the already existing categories, don’t just add new without thought.
• Also, add links from other peoples’ pages to your page when you see connections. Make it really connected.

Interviews

First interviews are in. Meg Butler and Ralph Maurer report back:

• People didn’t really seem that interested in media in cars. They though a lot of the stuff was silly, and wouldn’t do it if they could. Bill comments that a lot of people who like Pimp My Ride etc don’t do that stuff to their cars because it’s interesting but it’s not them.
• Content-wise: People either wanted access to their content or they wanted streaming radio and news: the latter tended to be women and the former men. Interestingly, the DJ (with the largest music collection) wanted the system to constrict his selection. Suggestion of itunes for car -- either really like or really hate, and the hates wouldn’t get satellite radio either.
• People liked having screens in back seats, more to have passengers help with navigation, but also for video and gaming. Wanted higher tech. people REALLY objected to video in the passenger side seat, because the passenger would not be paying attention to the driver. "Edutainment" ok, but not a lot of people really keen.
• Not really a difference in type of car based on locale, more a personality thing. It seemed that people were into gas-efficient stuff just as much. Most young people don’t want SUV’s. and this may well have more to do with SUV’s being old people cars than with the fact that they guzzle gas.
• Lots of people who needed SUV space said they’d rather drive a van for gas efficiency.
• Perception of space in the dash/front important, don’t want to feel enclosed (even if the leg room is the same). Better with the german style, where the dash goes down steeply.
• Integration with home? Some people like that idea, especially email in car.
• As long as the scenario was "elegant and trouble free" they’d go for it, but they might not think of it themselves.
• Key to have things come upfront -- if they have to be added on later, much less likely.

• Concept of car clubs and leasing -- both of them short ownership/control periods, so you need a way to shift your content rapidly (especially for the clubs, where you don’t drive the same car consistently but a different one every trip).
• Ease of use seems to be a really top priority. Not whole hog customization- a little customization in terms of content, but not complete customization. This is probably why satellite radio is so big -- it’s easy to figure out what you want, it’s easy to figure out where it is, it’s easy to keep it constant, it requires much less work from you to get decent content that is similar to your personal content (plus lack of commercials).
• American companies like to partner, and if the car companies partner with advertisers it will very likely backfire, because people really don’t like to get content because someone has paid to "shove it down their throat." For example, Howard Stern going to satellite radio, because he won’t be controlled by the FCC and by the advertisers; or satellite radio itself, and direcTV.
• Conversation -- you don’t want the passenger distracted, but you do want the kids in the back distracted so you can HAVE a conversation with the passenger. Talk shows as proxy conversation?
• Customization -- people don’t want to go to a lot of effort, but they like pre-sales customization. They don’t mind making a few choices, but they don’t want to do stuff themselves. Non-customization of mini’s -- how many people spend hours playing with the website and then buy something plain? Is this because of re-sale?
• Mobile phone use -- hands free? People like this, and they like to feel safer while driving. People also want to be able to have some privacy. Bad if you have it on hands free with a relative stranger in the car, and then you need to have a personal conversation in front of them "a weird social event."
• Using the car as a place you do things when you stop -- a 2 day trip, so you check email when you’re at the hotel, not while driving.
• Controls on the steering wheel for everything -- people want to do things while sitting in traffic. Heads-up, maybe they’re putting the wrong things up there, speed and odometer instead of radio and climate control.

• There is a company in Europe doing insurance specifically based on tracking you and then sending you a bill -- your rates will change depending on where you go and how fast.
  • David Platt adds -- I think that this is what we were talking about : Tracking down those insurance costs and Norwich Union's Pay As You Drive motor insurance.
• Suggestion of having a lo-jack that is accessible to the public, and communicates between cars.
  • If you’re caravanning and you lose someone, you could find them; if your kid takes your car, you could locate it; if your car is stolen, you can tell the police where it is; etc. this is besides the whole traffic thing.

Some Things to Ponder

• Networking and integration
• Privacy and social networking-
  • Phone in the car it’s private enough if you only hear one side of the conversation, but once you get both sides, it’s fairly intimate, even with a boring conversation.
  • Tracking and location -- who has access to this, who could/would use it for what?