Motorola Solutions Innovation & Technology Culture

Tell us about a time when your engineering team ran into a software issue. What was the problem, and how did your team solve it? What is one lesson your team learned from the experience?

Our software team builds technologies that help keep people safe and secure everywhere, and with this imperative, availability and reliability are critical. There was a time when we found ourselves facing a significant data load increase that was not forecasted. The new volume of data could create workflow challenges during peak times and maintenance routines or max out storage.

Multiple engineering teams collaborated to isolate the bottlenecks and enable scale, all while making minimal changes to our core code. We were able to remove all bottlenecks and implement a plan that safely and securely kept data flowing and accessible with minimal downtime to the end user.

This experience highlights how critically important it is to have a scalability plan in place while taking the time to allocate development resources for a large migration project. We also learned that rapid innovation is best when it comes from all team members bringing ideas to the table, openly collaborating and ideating — all backed by our decades of experience working with our customers to support confident operational performance.

What is one way your engineering team reduces risk and ensures that your software is safe and reliable?

To reduce risk and ensure reliability, we’re always looking for opportunities to simplify and limit code changes. We know that the more complex a solution is, the more it can be prone to bugs and defects.

We also understand the importance of the validation of code in development environments while having multiple engineers review changes. This means scanning code before each deployment and having other teams assess the solution. By doing this, we help ensure the software is safe and reliable.

Additionally, we conduct extensive field tests following significant software changes or enhancements. For example, we recently introduced a new performance mode on one of our cameras which was a significant change, touching multiple aspects of our firmware. This led to field tests for multiple cameras running live traffic for several weeks to verify that the feature met our standards.

This practice enables us to iterate and release quickly, with the safeguards in place to continuously enable our customers with technology advancements.

What is one best practice you think every engineering team should follow when it comes to software development safety?

Our engineers are steadfast in our never-ending pursuit to help keep people safer everywhere. And given the growing complexity of threats and challenges, it’s vital that we are constantly evolving and learning together. 

As a team, we’ve adopted best practices of code review and quality control methodology. This means we ensure multiple developers review code changes, and we expand this protocol to introduce additional review cycles commensurate with the criticality or risk profile of the update. Our leadership team also highlights when risk warrants assessment, which is key in steering a release or change. 

I’m incredibly proud of our impressive engineering team, building software to help to protect people, property and places so everyone everywhere can thrive.

With the kind of work that we’re doing, we’re making high-impact solutions that can be reached by our public safety professionals. Being in the AI space — where we get to help reduce that gap even further — is the icing on the cake.

What is the unique story that you feel your company has with AI? If you were writing about it, what would the title of your blog be?
My blog would be titled, “Meeting You Where You Are.”

At Motorola Solutions, we understand AI isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. Each unique role has a distinct way of processing information and understanding this allows us to shape our solutions to address our customers’ unique needs.

Given the critical nature of public safety, our AI is thoughtfully designed to assist and inform rather than distract. For example, 911 call takers’ priority is to gather essential information quickly and accurately to dispatch the appropriate help. We design AI to help collect this in a simple “who, what, where, when, why and how?” format. On the other hand, officers require in-depth documentation for record-keeping. Our AI is designed to help craft a detailed timeline, leveraging multiple streams of information and arranging it into the same agency template officers use. By implementing familiar design patterns, we establish trust between the user and our technology.

Our goal isn’t to simply inject AI anywhere into our technology; it’s to have AI conform to the human way of taking in information. We have the responsibility to meet you where you are.

What was a monumental moment for your team when it comes to your work with AI?
Motorola Solutions recently launched SVX and Assist, a first-of-its-kind video remote speaker microphone that converges secure voice, video and AI designed for our APX NEXT radio. SVX combines a body camera and radio into a single device and Assist places the power of human-AI collaboration directly into their hands.

Assist can query a license plate or driver’s license and automatically search for associated records or warnings, detect keywords in radio traffic such as “shots fired,” alert nearby officers and command center staff, and act as a live language translator between officer and community member.

Assist also targets some of officers’ most time-consuming work. Our research shows that patrol officers spend 40-60 percent of their time when writing reports entering basic data about people, vehicles and property. By collating data from radio conversations, officer’s location, 911 call information, camera footage and more, Assist augments an officer’s individual perspective. Officers’ time is preserved so they can spend more of it in their communities, confident in their factually grounded reports and evidence.

This launch establishes the path forward for AI in public safety.

AI is a constantly evolving field. Very few people coming into these roles have years of experience to pull from. Explain what continuous learning looks like on your team. How do you learn from one another and collaborate?
AI is more than a science — it’s an art. In the beginning, AI was something we added to our existing technology; it was the sugar we sprinkled into our coffee. But as the field evolved, so has the art form, and now AI has become the medium that we use … the coffee itself, so to speak.

With this shift, it’s imperative we design responsibly. Even with AI automation, we design for our users to maintain control.

Our teams enable this by prototyping our solutions much earlier in the design process. Customer testing is more iterative and our design teams work side by side with engineering and business teams to understand the possibilities. For SVX, we conducted research and usability testing with 32 agencies across 16 states.

This is what I love about Motorola Solutions — creativity is encouraged. I’m never afraid to propose new ideas because our teams are always eager to test them. This inherent positivity and spirit of innovation allows us to push the limits and create magic — in SVX and Assist and across the company.