Week 7 Customer Discovery
Goals
The past week, we tested our MVP — a digital visualization of past interdiction data over the last decade. This data includes features such as location of interdiction (latitude and longitude), sea state, tide level, moon phase, and type of illicit activity (drug smuggling or human trafficking). The interface was constructed using GeoJSON. We received positive feedback from patrollers and patrol schedulers and were told they would absolutely want the product, provided we added two features — the ability to filter by an environmental variable (sea state, tide, etc.) and a color gradient similar to that of a heat map.
This week, we hope to add these features into an updated MVP. The image below illustrates what this updated MVP might look like.
However, the most important focus for this week is understanding the acquisition and deployment process. Specifically, we want to understand who is in charge of authorizing purchases of new technology tools, how much they can spend on a standalone tool, pushback we might receive from other agencies (e.g. Intel), and what requirement we can satisfy to justify the purchase of this tool.
Hypotheses
Hypothesis 1: We can identify a specific need linked to one of the Coast Guard’s statutory missions that enables buy-in for our digital visualization tool of past historic interdiction data.
Hypothesis 2: If we add in filters for environmental / time-based variables and including a color gradient that corresponds to frequencies of interdiction spots, our beneficiaries will champion our product.
Test
To test our first hypothesis, we will show a sample data visualization (similar to the one above based on Kepler.gl) and then inquire about acquisition / deployment specifics. For our second hypothesis, time permitting, we will add in GeoJSON-based filter and heat-map features.
