19. I blew into this napkin, do you see anything?

Diddy getting ready for the feast

Who am I?

My name is Daniel Gamboa, I'm a second year Journalism and Innovation student at UF, researching and exploring the world of technology and the future of society as it is impacted with the varying changes to our world.

I personally aspire to become a major part of keeping tech companies and the sciences accountable to their impacts of their production processes. Business-wise, I hope for this company and product to be able to provide a new avenue to counteract the status quo of technological intrusion and hopefully help bring a world with respect to privacy.

What is being offered?

The Guard™ is my first model in privacy technology meant to fight against the nonconsensual surveillance and collection of our selves through recording and photography by security cameras. Its design, meant to be a low profile attachment for headgear, allows for discrete use and protects against surveillance from a vast majority of current security cameras by emitting a high concentration of infrared light from several LED lights. 

The discrete nature protects the consumers from immediate suspicion, while the fact that it is an attachment allows for interoperability with different headgear. The first design is premised on a standard baseball cap, but other designs in the pipeline include small independent clips and possible wire guards for customers who for either cultural or aesthetic reasons do not wear headgear.

Who is the main market?

The biggest market for this is people in the information industry, mainly relegated to journalists and other jobs that have high risks for identity abuse and targeting by malicious actors. These customers will already be privacy conscious, technologically savvy and live in mainly urban areas where surveillance and security technology will be most prevalent, estimates of customers average age around 25-43 years old.

Why this product?

With the Guard™, operational security is a major part of design thinking in that this product is naturally subversive to a surveillance environment. By protecting identity and allowing for operational security weaknesses in dedicated headgear or clothing products, there is a reduction in analysis and security malfeasance. The slim nature and minimalist design added on to secondary products for non-headgear focused products will make the Guard™ series easier to integrate into one's life and routine and provide a level of security with the least amount of friction in mental awareness and drain of memorizing a security process.

What do I bring to the table?

I have personal experience in design thinking and 3D modeling, allowing me to have a clear vision in what I want this product to be and how to accomplish some of the things it is trying to live up to, mainly the discretion and slim design for low noticeability. I have some minor exposure to website design and can create a functional site for the product that may be able to immediately take in customers. My personal involvement in the market and seeing how this product could be of help for my own industry and for others where identity is a very lucrative commodity, being able to draw directly from those to further understand my consumer gives me a minor edge.

How well do I work?

My business idea has been in the mental stew for quite some time, so I have worked out a lot of the personal and business foundations for why, how, and what the product is as it is. The only thing I feel is out of place would be the fact that online shopping, where I expect almost all my purchases to come from, is itself privacy encroaching. I would love for my product to leave as little as possible behind to who the customer is as to not steal data and become a target myself of data breaches.

Feedback memo

One main piece of feedback that I got was the distinction between being a business student doing this sort of project and being a journalism student in this process. Not being entrepreneurial by nature of business, but entrepreneurial in nature of curiosity and stories, I think the ability for getting feedback and interviewing has helped me refine my thought process and provided a different background from which to tackle this project. The other point of feedback I saw was about execution. While I would love to create this product myself, there is only so much time I have to be able to dedicate to modeling and design work while still in school, so I may need to look into avenues of research or design work assistance to get this product idea to come together.