Where did the idea come about?
“It was an idea that everyone has at some point – it would be great to have an app that would kick in when you are having a few beers and don’t want to go on Facebook or Twitter, or drunk dial or drunk message people. Everyone has heard horror stories over the years. You hear about people making booty calls to ex’s. People texting their boss and telling them what they think of them. We figured we wouldn’t be able to do it on iPhone, because they don’t give you the level of access you need, but we would be able to do it on Android phones.”
How does it work?
“The app gets you to set up a white list in your phone. For someone going out on a night out, it might be a family member or a couple of people on the night out with you. Lastly, your travel arrangements or taxi driver. Emergency services are not blocked. The app works within a time limit. The only way to break that time limit is to break one of our sobriety tests.”
What are the sobriety tests?
“Firstly, it checks your cognitive skills. There’s one for mental arithmetic. You have to get five questions right. Then there’s a puzzle test, in which you trace a line with your finger along the phone screen. This is difficult after a few jars. The last is a ‘mixing your drinks’ test. There are eight pairs of drinks: you see them all on tiles. They disappear and you have to pick out the pairs within 30 seconds.”
Did these tests require research?
“We researched cognitive skill tests. Reasoning skills like maths become impossible when you’re drunk. Your memory skills get affected. When you have to try and remember patterns or where tiles are placed that’s hard. Obviously, if your hands are all over the place it’s going to be difficult to trace your finger along a dotted line.”
Can you receive calls?
“You can receive calls from anyone in your white list and the emergency services. The app blocks incoming calls, outgoing calls. It blocks incoming texts but can’t block outgoing texts. The text can go out but it’s followed by a pre-formatted text saying, ‘Please ignore what I just said, I’m on the Lock-Out app’.”
There’s a breathalyser peripheral that plugs into iPhones.
“Yes, and there is an Easter Egg within the app. If you fail the test three times it asks you to blow into the phone and perform a breathalyser test. The microphone picks up that you’re blowing into the phone. Once you’re finished it says, ‘Did you really think you could use your phone as a breathalyser? Obviously, you’ve had one too many’.”