How this founder is using his psychology doctorate to make airports suck less

Cognitive psychology may not be the first thing that comes to mind when discussing entrepreneurship, but Daniel Gartenberg, founder and CEO of Fairfax-based travel startup Fly Fleet, believes the two aren’t so different.
To be fair, Gartenberg himself, who earned a Ph.D. in psychology from George Mason University late last year, was surprised to learn about how many entrepreneurs are cognitive psychologists — turns out there are more similarities than you’d think.
“Both roles typically involve building and testing hypotheses and computer programming,” Gartenberg said in a feature for the July/August edition of the American Psychological Association journal. “I think it’s pretty exciting to use these skills to create things that have the potential to help a lot of people.”
Fly Fleet’s iOS app, Fleet, is a product that practices one use of applied cognition, “making systems and software to help people on a large scale,” Gartenberg said.
The app aims to improve the air travel experience for travelers by collecting information on flight delays, lengths of the security and ticketing lines and airport accommodations, from other travelers who happen to be at the airport. That data, which includes GPS and motion data from users’ phones, is combined with commercial flight and airline information to create a crowdsourced travel guide of sorts.
Here’s Gartenberg on how his cognitive psychology training helped him build his app:

“My training in writing algorithms and measuring human behavior helped me figure out that people have very unique body signatures when they are waiting in a line and going through security. The intensity of movement, for example, slows down and the smooth motion of the phone on the security belt is distinct. … I believe that learning the scientific method in graduate school set me up for solving problems in general, which is critical for entrepreneurs.”

Read the full interview here.