Idea Generation

Anonymous threat reporting tools are common in the school safety industry however, these tools often strain school resources because of the amount of reports they generate and how many are fake reports. Many states also require that schools have an anonymous threat tool but do not fund the additional resources it takes to utilize these tools effectively.

Idea Screening 

I conducted interviews with school administrators to determine how many man hours they spend going through anonymous reports and how valuable they are. I determined that by applying NLP and computer vision to sort and categorize reports as they come in, we could cut the time it takes a school to review these reports in half. 

Concept Development and Testing

Using our research, I developed the concept for an app that would allow students and staff to submit threats either anonymously or non-anonymously. Upon submitting the threat, we would use NLP and computer vision to weed out any false threats and categorize and score the validated threats. Administrators would then be able to access these reports from a dashboard.

Market Strategy and Business Analysis 

I developed the general scope of the project and ran a quantitative study of over 1,000 schools (10% of the market) to determine market validation and product fit.

Product Development 

I led our Software Engineers, using Agile and Scrum methodologies, to develop the KnowNow Platform and Application.

Market Testing

Once we had completed developing our MVP, we onboarded key Beta users and got their feedback on use and value. 

Market Entry/ Commercialization

We launched the product through a series of direct and indirect marketing campaigns, webinars, and social media advertisements procuring our first 250 users over 2 months.