AD C2
View appIntroduction
AD C2 is a cloud based dashboard for managing drones operations, missions and flights. Also has an integrated mobile app, C2 Pilot, for drone pilots and crew to remotely control UAVs. The goal of the project was to implement a streamlined system for drone administrators to manage assets, drone workflows and personnel, from mission planning to flight monitoring. My role was to understand the specific details of the UAV ecosystem and improve UI on both web dashboard and mobile app.
Problem statement
Both web C2 and C2 Pilot app were developed and published with a very basic UI created by the developers and stakeholders at the beginning while the Design team did not have enough resources at the time to start this project. Several months later the Design team was involved to analyze and review the project and suggest UI improvements.
Research
We conducted user research with QA specialists and stakeholders to find the main issues of the user experience based on feedback. Benchmarking with our main competitors we were able to meet the industry standards and best practices to fix the current UI and have new ideas for the UAV service application.
Design process
Based on our research, several meetings with the client were made to approve the new workflows, validate the information architecture diagram mapping all processes and user interactions. Then later, high-fidelity mockups with the new style guide were created to ensure consistency throughout the web dashboard and mobile app.
Solution
At first the Design team worked collaboratively with Development to help fix the existing workflows. Along the way all the workflows were mapped on a Figma board and designed from scratch following the new style guide for applications while development were implementing the changes on a new branch.
Results
The final accomplishment was to watch in real-time a drone physically in the US, manufactured in France, take off and landing through the app we’ve built in Brazil, with the collaboration of other partners based in India and China.
Both C2 dashboard and C2 Pilot were reviewed and pre-approved by US government officials for using LAANC(Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability) by the FAA(Federal Aviation Administration).
With the deployment of the final product both users and stakeholders praised the Design improvements, that resulted in a better experience and client satisfaction.
Reflection
This project taught me the importance of the UI/UX designer to fully understand the whole ecosystem, rather to just focus on designing beautiful UI. There is a huge gap of an UI to be just beautiful than to be really functional and useful for the users. It also reinforced the value of collaboration with developers and operations managers to ensure the final product is functional and meets industry standards.
