Project Background
UAV (Unmanned Aircraft Vehicle) commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft without a human on board. UAVs are components of and UAS(Unmanned aircraft system) which includes an additional ground-based controller and system of communication with the UAV. Drones or UAVs originated in the military but their use is rapidly growing in various industries like product deliveries, real estate, solar panels, agriculture, STEM academics, and many many more.
According to FAA( Federal Aviation Administration), there several types of drone flyers: recreational flyers, commercial operators, public safety or government, and educational users. Each of these flyers has different rules, regulations, and requirements.
The purpose of having a drone license is to make sure that drone pilots using their drones for commercial purposes have general knowledge and are safely abiding by the rules of the sky established by FAA and NAS. Part107 Remote Pilot Certificate is referring to general knowledge of rules and regulations that the FAA comes up with to integrate drones into the National Airspace System. These rules and regulations are part of FAR AIM and 14 codes of Federal regulation all under Part 107.
How might we:
Design a study app for Part 107 general knowledge and get ready to easily obtain Drone commercial certification?
Let's Get Started
At the very beginning, I would like to start with identifying the UX design process, defining each stage, and then dive into details throughout the case study. The graph bellow will serve us as a guide in getting a sense of idea that will follow chronologically throughout the process:
Stage One | Empathize
In this stage, fundamental elements are identifying the potential users, learn about their thoughts, understand their needs, and empathize with their problems. Creating a detailed research plan with various research methods like secondary research, competitive analysis, and 1 on 1 interviews will help us into accomplishing our goals throughout the process.
Since I had very little knowledge about UAV's aka Drones, and certainly not enough to create and round a study app, I started first with conducting secondary research to learn more about drones, their rapid growth and need in everyday life, also to understand the requirements, overall knowledge and obstacles people faced in obtaining commercial drone pilot licensing. I started my research by reading online resources and material about the growing drone market and implementing drones in various industries. Based on my findings I synthesized some important data for our journey.
As another important method in our early process, I performed a detailed competitive analysis in the continuation of my research. With the few study apps for drone commercial operators that I was able to find, I created a checklist to compare their current features. This method was very beneficial for further determining and defining what the Drone Academy app might need. Even though there were not as many competitive apps at the moment, the information I gathered helped me in understanding the importance of learning some general rules like airspace rules, reading weather forecasts, and other requirements important to learn before operating commercial UAV.
1 on 1 interview
For my primary research, I conducted a 1 on 1 interview with 5 participants. Four men and one woman, of various ages and occupations, were able to answer questions related to their personal drone interest, motivation, and experience in learning part 107. Upon conducting the interviews with my participants, I was able to achieve a deeper and more empathic understanding of their motivations, passion, and interests in operating UAVs, and I also understand the pain points directly from some UAV pilots themselves. Some participants were willing to share drone stories outside of the interview script, which was really interesting and useful in my research. Here are some of the key findings:
• Participants stated being interested in drones about three to four years ago. Most of the participants started using drones as a hobby and then quickly became passionate about drones.
• Some of the motivations between interviewees were: learning something new, fun, and adventurous, with huge growth potential, making aerial photography with very high-resolution cameras, and also using thermal, zoom, lidar, and multispectral camera, as well as inspecting their house's roofs, or other objects or buildings.
• Licensed participants, which attended the in-person academies and online program, both said that they were very satisfied with the curriculum of the program, but there were very limited options to practice for the test. They've been only given just one practice test with the same questions.
• Participants explained the importance of getting the general pilot knowledge, learning all about airspace and airport regulation, reading airspace map figures, and a lot more which are as same as being an airplane or helicopter pilot, with the difference that drone pilots operate the device remotely.
• Obtaining the Part 107 certification opens opportunities for the participants to implement drones in their current jobs as well as being hired like freelancers for various purposes.
Here is the link to the detailed interview findings.
Persona & Empathy Map
The interview findings and all the research data I gathered by now, helped me to identify and understand the potential users . For the final part of my research process, I wrap up the gathered data into creating a persona, an archetypical user whose goals and characteristics represent the needs of a larger groups of users, including behavior patterns, skills, goals, attitudes, and more. Creating an empathy map, was an addition to the persona for better sense of understanding our user's base, and what is going in our user's mind daily, and determine possible obstacles they're facing with. Addressing all these, give us another useful tool in heading in the right direction in our journey.
Stage Two | Define
The emphasize stage helped provide the framework to define the project goals. Here we look at our research data, determine and define the goals we tend to achieve, understand the framework, and gain clarity of the features that could be included in the Drone Academy app, all to realize the idea while adhering to the needs of the users. This step brought us clarity to the design process, also helped connect the research to the process of design.
The biggest challenge we faced here was to well align project goals with the business benefits. The graph below presents business, users, and mutual goals, all of them are equally important for the project to become fully successful.
Next, we created the Feature Roadmap, a detailed checklist of possible attributes that the Drone Academy app will consist of, and we ranked them in order of importance. Additional to the feature roadmap we created a feature matrix, which represents how important the features are in relation to the cost. The graphs below illustrate the features ranked by cost, impact, and priorities(P1, P2..) in our Feature roadmap and also features grouped by the importance of the cost shown in the feature matrix.
Information Architecture
So far we defined our users, established our goals, and created the checklist of all the possible features for our Drone Academy app. Now we continue our quest into the process of actually making things. First step in designing the real solution is the general structure of the things. Information Architecture (IA) defines how the content will be organized, structured, and presented to the users when they are interacting with the design. Drone Academy sitemap shows how we organized our features structurally, label each component, and created a studying journey for the enrolled students. The sitemap represents the journey of an enrolled student, choosing the learning option for studying the in-progress module with a various practice methods and materials.
Stage three | Ideation
The ideation stage started with sketching the ideas, which for me is one of the most crucial aspects for providing the clarity of the architecture. Using the architecture as a guide, I started sketching some ideas on paper and simultaneously bring the idea to life. I did go through various versions and quick explorations of creating minimal designs that would be easy to navigate, exploring layout ideas for the page, and exploring features that I had been uncovered in the research and architecture phases.
Further step into ideation is creation of wireframes , which is equally important as the basic wireframes/sketches. Here, based on the sketches and IA, I developed the mid-fidelity wireframes with more clarity and the focus was given on the layout of the pages as well as the functionality of the app. Along with this we wanted to give users various options for learning and practicing, from reading and listening features, as well as flash cards, quizzes, podcast and more. These features will help uses to explore the best fit for their study style and provide them with required knowledge for the part 107.
One of our high-level goals was creating Brand Identity for our Drone Academy app. Our goal was to create a brand that matches the brand vision, qualities and objections. For the logo we decided to stay with the Drone Academy name, clean, simple and still strong by itself, which clearly represent the real app purpose. The color palette was decided upon to maintain the minimalism of the app, feels of modern friendly and innovative. Typeface, Lato perfectly bland into the other design elements and make the complete branding unique and recognizable for the Done Academy app.
Stage Four | Prototype
Along with developing the UI Kit, it was time to create our visual design and high fidelity prototype for the Drone Academy app. Here is the link to the prototype for the journey of enrolled students ready to continue studying and practice the Drone Academy app curriculum and get for the part 107 exam.
Stage Five | Testing
Usability testing was conducted with 5 participants, 2 current commercial drone pilots, and three potential ones. Here is the link to the usability testing plan
Goals
- Participants can easily and effortlessly navigate the app.
- Participants can complete the task 100% without confusion.
- Identifying errors, problems, and frustrations with the app and thinking of possible solving and solutions.
Task
Scenario: The participant is a student enrolled in Drone Academy and has already downloaded the app.
Task: The participants were asked to go to their app to continue the study, choose the learning option for practice to complete the lesson.
Key takeaways and suggestions from the usability testing:
• Participants were able to complete the task and the overall impression of the app was modern, catchy, clear, and easy to navigate.
• Participants like the options where they can resume the study where they had left it before (instead of starting all over every time they practice) and they also liked the sequential studying where they have to finish the in-progress module in order to start a new one.
• Participants were especially delighted with the variety of study and practice options.
• There were few suggestions of the participants that the app would benefit from, like adding a download option and including a blog section with imagery and library.
• Another great suggestion is implementing virtual drone practice along with theoretical study, which will defiantly be a great hit for the app.
Here are the links to the usability findings.
Next Step
The next step will be updating the prototype, conduct more testing, and further improvement of the Drone Academy app.
This was a great experience! Participating in a process in which an idea developed into life is just incredible. This gives so much self-satisfaction and confidence. I did learn a lot through this project, practice and learn new tools, and developed new skills. I feel so proud and excited to share this experience.
Thank you for reading!
