Background

• Role: Product Design Intern
• Timeline: 2 Months
• I worked as a Product Design intern at Gamma Rotors for 2 months onsite with a highly experienced product team and this was the project that I worked on. As the sole designer in the company, I assumed full responsibility for the product's design and development. Throughout my time with the team, I got an opportunity to explore various concepts and ideas that went into the development stage after discussion with team members.
• Gamma Rotors make UAV/Drones with state of art technology supported to Aerial mapping and Surveillance applications for Armed and Defense forces.

Problem

The existing drone control interfaces are of other manufacturing companies and there is a need for an in-house and personalised drone control interface specific to the drones of Gamma Rotors such that features can be modified and changed according to the existing models.

Research

Understanding the users

At the start of the project, I had a discussion with the product team to completely understand the users of their product(which in this case are the military drone operators) and the context of the use of their product.

The users are experienced professionals who have years of experience in flying drones and are very well-versed in all the technical parameters and functions related to the product. The product team also provides these professionals with training on the features and usage of their drones.

After speaking with the product team and completely understanding my users i crafted a user persona of the drone pilot which I can refer to at every stage of my design process.

User Persona of a Military UAV Pilot

Understanding the requirements of the product team

I received a PRD(Product Requirement Document) from the product team clearly stating the features and requirements of the drone interface that needs to be developed. Some of the major points that were needed to be covered were -