Week 9: Feature Expansion, Data Insights, and Business Planning

This week felt like a shift from building core functionality to making SafeSense feel more like a complete product. I kicked things off by adding an emergency contact feature to the app. Now users can store a trusted contact who can be notified if they’re repeatedly flagged as drowsy. It’s a small piece of the puzzle, but it adds real value.

After that, I spent a day refining the data visuals for head pose and eye aspect ratio (EAR). The old plots were messy, so I cleaned them up with better histograms and angle distributions. The new graphs make patterns way easier to spot, especially when trying to understand drowsy behavior over time.

Midweek, I dove into the financial side. I created a 3-year model to put together a P&L statement, looking at things like how much I’m spending on marketing versus how many customers I might actually convert. It was a different kind of thinking—less code, more spreadsheets—but super helpful to understand how SafeSense could grow sustainably.

To wrap things up, I wrote this blog post and reflected a bit. It’s cool to see SafeSense go from “here’s a working prototype” to “here’s a product that actually makes sense, financially and functionally.” Now only the visual parts of this project are left.

– James Gu