Visual MOT - an app for MOT testers

I had an idea and I made it happen

This is a quick break away from the usual things I write to tell you about something I’ve been working on.

If you follow me on Twitter you may already be aware of a project I’ve been working on recently. The idea formed about a year ago but I didn’t do much with it until I posted the following tweet with a simple poll:

Despite my small following on Twitter the tweet gained quite a big response and this spurred me on. It seems there is an appetite for a way to make it easy for motorists to get more detailed information when their vehicle receives its annual MOT test.

In my head I had a solution to this that would be straightforward enough for me to try and build. It has not been quick or entirely cost free to do. But it is something I believe can work and actually help vehicle owners and garages so I figured focussing some energy on it was worthwhile.

The app is pitched at garages / MOT testing stations rather than their customers initially. MOT testers inspecting vehicles can provide more information by way of photos and comments to the customer. The customer doesn’t have to download the app to benefit from it and that seems like a win to me. Visual MOT is the name I came up with as the key element is giving people the chance to see for themselves the defects that their car may have failed on or require work in future. It’s also a great way of ensuring the garage themselves has a record of what was discovered.

The app offers a couple of options for garages to send the results to the customer: both email and SMS text messages. The latter in fact sends a link to a unique web page containing the results. It’s a simple and hassle free way of using information a garage normally collects when the customer drops off their car - which at the very least usually includes their mobile phone number.

None of this is rocket science but sometimes the best solutions just involve putting together things that already exist in different and unique ways.

And now after a few months of putting spare time and energy into this project I have a solution ready. The app is now available in Google Play for Android and the Apple iOS App Store for iPhone / iPad.

I’m going to be reaching out to a number of garages in different ways in the coming weeks and months to see if this is something that can work to help them and what I can do to support and develop the app in the longer term.

In the mean time please check it out, share the news and visit visualmot.co.uk for more details.

You can also follow @VisualMOT on Twitter.

It’s anyone’s guess as to how widely used this will be, but who knows maybe one day soon you might receive a Visual MOT report for your car!

The image above shows a sample report that would be sent by the app

Thanks for reading. Sorry it’s a bit of self - promotion this time! Back to more updates on my cars and what I’ve been up to with them soon.