Awesome. I really like it.
An initial thought...Perhaps, it's use case is possibly a little more Western World-centric due to the audio/video aspect of things. Where recording a perpetrator is a deterrence against further aggression.
We do a lot of work with NGOs and human rights defenders where security, especially in developing nations, is a different concept. What I mean is that in many emergency situations, the last thing you want a normal person (starting to panic and who's decision making process is starting to slow down and become impaired under pressure) to do is start holding a video camera up. Especially in the context of a case like a kidnapping or under fire. That will only have only the effective of a) probably antagonising the attacker, leading to the phone being snatched and/or thrown away (thus breaking the most important aspect, the real time reporting of current location)...b) in the most high risk situations, the user needs to be getting themselves to safety, as this initial 30 second reaction is the most important - focusing on the video and audio on the phone will slow this down and undo the natural inbuilt reaction to run like hell...
Anyway, just a thought, awesome project and good on you for doing it.
(Please excuse the following: Plug for our security planning tool, which aims at preventing physical and digital security incidents http://www.secfirst.org ...Plug for a very cool Android panic button: Amnesty https://panicbutton.io)...Plugs over :)
Some feedback from a discussion I had after seeing this:
three modes: 1 - immediate life threatening danger, call police (and notify friends/family) 2 - non-immediate, but still notify friends/family 3 - possible danger (just scared) - record everything (remote server), hold for 24 hours before sending to friends/family.
I think #3 could be one of your best use cases: A lot of people don't like walking to their car alone at night, or through a dark alley, or meeting someone on a first date. But they also don't want to stream that to their friends/family for no real reason. This gives them time to stop/erase content where nothing happens. In the case where something does happen, evidence is still maintained even if the phone is knocked/dropped out of their hand immediately, or whatever. You could also have a quicker way to "upgrade" to #1 in this mode, in case the threat turns more immediate and the user still has time/thought process to act.
Congratulations! A similar app won Google's Social Impact Challenge 2014 [1] in Brazil. It's named PLP 2.0 [2], and it's aimed mainly at women that suffer from violent partners.
A few friend and I built something similar for a hackathon made by the brazilian Chamber of Deputies on Genre [3]. Our main differentiator was that we didn't rely on having a smartphone at all, as our focus was on low-income women in Brazil, which (we thought) is the class that needs something like this the most. Although smartphone use is increasing very quickly in Brazil, only 20% of the brazilians had one in 2014.
Ours worked by having a phone number where people would call via a fast-dial number (so it would need just one button press), then it would start recording the audio and send an SMS to NGOs that work with women's protection so they could call the cops or whatever was deemed necessary.
Obviously, by not requiring a smartphone we wouldn't have access to the person's location. The solution was based on the fact that ~70% of the attacks occur on the victim's home. We would pre-register the person's number and addresses (home, work, etc.), so that when we received a "help request", we would know where to start looking for her. This was the best we could do with a dumb phone.
[1] https://desafiosocial.withgoogle.com/brazil2014 [2] http://www.plp20.org.br/ [3] https://github.com/thacker/botao-do-panico
Most phones have really terrible UIs for getting to something like this. In circumstances where I want to start using an app like this, I usually don't have 5-10 seconds to take my concentration off of my surroundings to load the app. I've been in plenty of situations where I wished I could immediately start recording things but didn't have time to navigate my phone's UI.
Not a new concept. Many have tried and failed. Even though the social cause is clear and many people will say great idea, very few will use it if their life is on the line. And even less will pay for it unless it's bundled with some sort of home care service/monitoring.
The 1st point is actually a big liability problem. If your life is at risk will you make a 911 call (which even works without data coverage) or trust an app that you have not started in a while to work as expected? And you must have data for it to work too right. Apps need consistent updates to fix bugs and when a OS update breaks it, you are putting people at risk. Too much of a risk to take to rely on an app to save your life.
The 2nd point, is whether you will end up having a business. You have a business when someone pays for your product/service. Until then it is not a business. Who will pay for this luxury of a better 911 and why do they really need it when 911 is free and more reliable? If the emergency is not 911 serious level than what role does the app play?
Hope these questions help you flesh your thinking around this space/product. Just because you build it don't mean they will come ;-)
I love this concept, and it is sorely needed. I read in your Medium post[1] that “Data is wiped from the phone as soon as it’s securely moved to the Witness servers.” I'm curious what the reasoning for this is. Of course, I get that the data is streamed/copied to Witness in the event that the device is destroyed or confiscated, but it's hard for me to think of a use case where having a local version on the device would would do any harm.
In fact, I think it would be valuable for evidentiary purposes to have the original on the device. I'm assuming that the streamed/copied version is probably lossy in some regard, while the local version might be higher resolution or frame rate, also.
[1] https://medium.com/@marinosbern/witness-livestreaming-for-em...
Cool work...I haven't downloaded the app to my phone yet, but is there a stage between activating the app and then going into emergency mode, e.g. broadcast + emailing all emergency contacts?
I could foresee situations in which someone is fearful, but not yet ready to raise the alarm...in which case, having the phone go into video/audio/geo-broadcast mode would be nice, but not "email/text everyone".
I really liked the accompanying blog post (https://medium.com/@marinosbern/witness-livestreaming-for-em...)...a lot of nice meditations on making something new by noticing the small inconveniences and barriers in real-world usage of existing solutions.
This is an excellent idea. I wish you the best of luck.
I have experience with social networking apps and a BIG challenge that you'll have is if the functionality depends on the person's friends onboarding for the person to get value.
I would encourage you to think very hard about providing value for the user without any of their friends necessarily being on the app. Even if you had a 90% completion rate for each step of your on boarding funnel, the longer you make your funnel, the more you'll trend toward 0% activation.
Great idea. What happens if there's no cell network? Does it record AV and upload later in the background?
Awesome! saw it on techcrunch: http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/03/witnesss-livestreaming-app-...
I like the idea of combining this with drones: http://www.civileyes.me/
Great work! I've heard of this for Uber in India, but always thought that a standalone version would be a great idea. Genius all around.
The link to the privacy policy just links to the promotion webseite. Do you plan on selling footage to news organizations?
Very good idea! But what happens if something's happening in underground parking lot where there's no signal?
I've witnessed this app at techCrunch, such a simple yet so powerful tool for safety.
The title and event his web page led me to believe it was related to this project: http://witness.org/
"WITNESS is an international organization that trains and supports people using video in their fight for human rights."
Was this inspired by the last 2 episodes of Silicon Valley?
Hi HN! I’m Marinos, I made this. Here’s a medium post I just wrote going into more detail on the motivation & design decisions behind Witness: https://medium.com/@marinosbern/witness-livestreaming-for-em.... Let me know if you have any feedback/questions about Witness or live streaming or anything else. One question I get a lot is whether I am planning to open source this. I am, and I’m also extracting all the live streaming logic into a drop-in iOS library. Cheers!