Driveway partners with Uptech Studio

Uptech Studio collaborated with Driveway (acquired by Earnix) to develop a white-label, usage-based insurance program, including mobile applications that track driving behavior in real time. The solution we created powers Farmers Signal application.

The Client

Driveway was a telematics startup with proprietary technology capable of analyzing driving behavior through smartphone sensors. Their innovative technology could detect and evaluate driving patterns to determine driving quality and safety metrics.

The Challenges

Challenge #1: Getting users over the trust hurdle

For a consumer setting especially, it’s not a given that people will install and use an app that allows their auto insurance company to track their driving behavior. And it’s not just about convincing the direct customers (the person setting up the policy)–they at least see the potential financial benefit—but getting all the drivers on the policy (including teen drivers), to willingly participate that’s tough.

To get it right, we partnered with Driveway to deeply understand peoples’ mindset around the experience so we could storyboard, prototype, and test the experience before building and releasing it to the public. Finding a balance between a background app that

Challenge #2: White labeling is never that simple

The starting point of most white label solutions seems straightforward: change the font, a few colors, logos… how hard can it be? But it’s never that simple, especially if your perspective isn’t what’s the least we can do? but rather, what will feel like an integrated customer experience for the end user and ultimately make the third-party successful?

We knew from the outset that basic configuration-file based style changes wouldn’t hit the mark—that would quickly turn into questions about how to handle feature toggling, varying user flows, and code management for partners with different review processes and release cycles. If we hadn’t anticipated these concerns, we could have ended up in a painful cycle of delivery delays and refactoring work that wasn’t set up to scale.

Challenge #3: B2B2C and integrating with the Enterprise

While building proper white label support isn’t straightforward, building apps that meet the requirements of large enterprises and integrate with their systems is several orders of magnitude more complicated.

As a startup trying to get large enterprises to launch innovative products, writing good code isn’t enough.

Presentation and persuasion: Getting disparate internal groups to understand what you’re trying to accomplish and persuade them to work with you to find a path to joint success is critical. It doesn’t matter how good your product is if key stakeholders aren’t your enthusiastic advocates and if you can’t work with internal teams to actually do work on your behalf so that you can be successful.
Creative problem solving: sometimes dropping CSVs into an SFTP folder is a better solution than trying to get a big company to build a new API endpoint for an unproven project
Deep listening and understanding scale: working with enterprises means being able to rapidly make sense of how complex (often legacy) systems interoperate, picture how your new solution can fit into the puzzle and what work will be required to get there, and foresee risks and know how to mitigate them.

Our Approach

Uptech Studio partnered with Driveway to develop a comprehensive white-label solution that would satisfy both Driveway's technology requirements and Farmers Insurance's enterprise needs, with particular attentions to:

Creating a compelling user experience that would encourage adoption and continued usage.
Developing robust consumer mobile applications to deploy their technology at scale.
Meeting the enterprise-level requirements of key customers, like Farmers Insurance, who wanted to implement a program offering insurance discounts based on safe driving behaviors.

1. Discovery & Strategy

Conducted in-depth research to understand user motivations in the auto insurance space.
Collaborated with both Driveway and Farmers Insurance to align on program goals and technical requirements.
Identified key friction points in user adoption of telematics-based insurance programs.
Created detailed user personas and customer journey maps to understand the dynamics of entire households, recognizing that all drivers on an insurance plan—not just the policyholder—would need to adopt and use the app.

2. Design

Created intuitive user interfaces that simplified complex driving data.
Developed engagement strategies to encourage ongoing app usage.
Designed clear visual feedback systems to help users understand their driving behaviors and improvement opportunities.
Used personas and journey maps to illustrate the complete user experience to both Driveway and Farmers Insurance, ensuring alignment on expectations.

3. Development

Built a flexible white-label platform that could be quickly branded and configured for different insurance providers.
Developed a sophisticated data pipeline to efficiently collect sensor data from mobile devices, transmit it securely to backend services for analysis, and return actionable insights to users.
Implemented privacy-conscious data handling practices to protect sensitive user information.
Created a scalable architecture that balanced immediate needs with future growth potential, avoiding over-engineering while ensuring the system could handle enterprise-level demands.

4. Integration

Worked closely with Farmers Insurance to navigate their enterprise requirements without unnecessary complexity.
Established reliable data pipelines between the mobile application and back-end systems.
Ensured compliance with industry regulations and security standards while maintaining development agility.

The Results

Our partnership with Driveway resulted in the successful launch of the Farmers Insurance Signal program, which allows Farmers customers to potentially earn discounts on their auto insurance premiums by demonstrating safe driving habits.

The program continues to be a part of Farmers' mobile strategy, helping them deploy usage-based insurance models that benefit both the company and their safety-conscious customers.

The success of this implementation contributed to Driveway's growth and market position, ultimately leading to their acquisition by Earnix, a leading provider of AI-powered pricing and rating solutions.

Why This Project Matters

This engagement showcases Uptech Studio's ability to:

Apply Telematics Expertise: This project is one of several successful telematics implementations in our portfolio, demonstrating our specialized knowledge in this complex industry. Our experience across multiple telematics clients gives us unique insights into the challenges and opportunities in this space.

Deliver End-to-End Solutions: From strategy and design to development and integration, we provided comprehensive services that addressed every aspect of the challenge.

Navigate Complex Stakeholder Requirements: By successfully balancing the needs of both Driveway and Farmers Insurance, we demonstrated our ability to work effectively with startups and enterprise clients simultaneously.

Create Simple Solutions for Complex Problems: We translated sophisticated telematics technology into an intuitive, engaging user experience that drives real behavioral change.

Build Enterprise-Ready Products Without Over-Engineering: Our approach ensures products are compliant and scale-ready while avoiding premature optimization, allowing our clients to validate their business models before making significant infrastructure investments.

Interested in other things we've written about telematics? Check out these:

Driveway & Farmers Signal Program: Telematics for the Insurance Industry