Verizon Robotics - Media Transfer
Completing the pilots core workflow by automating media management.
My Role
Product Designer
Team
1 Product Manager
1 iOS Engineer
1 Android Engineer
2 QA
Timeframe
2 Months
Context
Our goal is to be the end-to-end workflow solution for drone pilots. To achieve that goal, we still need to provide a solution that could light up the share bucket.
The plan
Transferring data (photos and videos) from the drone to a storage location is the first step in helping our users get the data they need to a spot where they can work with it.
Core Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) buckets for the pilot persona
Detailed view of the JTBD Journey map for the pilot persona.
User Needs
Although the whole journey needs to be factored in, this is the moment we were looking closer at. It’s where we discussed scope with product management and did technical spikes early in the process.
Research
First I interviewed customers (ethnographic field studies) to discover all the goals and needs of the pilots.
How is it done today? Specifically!
What else has been tried?
What parts are frustrating?
What part do users enjoy?
What is the competitive landscape?
Findings
Transferring is a Bottleneck
Sharing is by far the slowest part of the pilots workflow. After a day of flying, they would drive home (or to a hotel room) and start the upload process to a shared server.
Many times, other team members were waiting for the images to come through. This put extra pressure on the pilot.
Small Media Cards
Drones use MicroSD cards to store the photos and videos during the flight. This is nice and lightweight for the drone, but tough for pilots because they are easy to misplace.
Furthermore, MicroSD cards need an adapter to work on most laptops and if pilots forgot the adapter, upload was delayed. This was very common–7/10 pilots shared a story of forgetting the adaptor at least once.
Time Remaining is Clutch
Once the pilot had the card in the laptop and the media was transferring, it is most important to validate that media was saving to the correct location.
The progress bar was the second most important feedback loop because it told the pilot when everything was ready. They could message their team and complete their workflow (SHARE).
Ideate
Two things the pilot cares most about:
1. When can I disconnect from the drone?
We need the pilot to stay connected to the drone until all the images have transferred to the phone.
What type of existing notification systems do we have?
2. When will my team receive the media?
This is the important part – the final step in the pilots day.
How might we clearly indicate to them that the media transfer is complete?
How might I solve for those 2 needs in this screen?
Test
I took two of the best ideas and conducted field tests with 5 participants.
Menu status
4/5 participants felt the step-by-step progress indicator was too complicated.
Inflight status
5/5 participants preferred the notifications within the component (lower image).
Final designs
Inflight Status
After the capture is complete at 0:06, media transfer begins.
*User can cancel if they want to continue capturing media.
For the Flight screens, I was able to reuse an existing component.
Menu Status
At 0:13 in the video, the drone lands.
The Skyward menu automatically expands to reveal a new progress indicator in the table header. This is a new component shows the progress of the media transfer until it is complete.
It was quick and easy to build (using atoms from our design system) 👇
Safe to Disconnect from the Drone
At 0:24, the pilot can disconnect from the drone.
We have downloaded all the images to the phone. Sync to their cloud storage will happen in the background until complete. They can pack up their gear, and head home.
Progress after disconnecting from the aircraft
We use the same progress indicator to reflect progress in both views (available in light and dark mode).
Notify your team the media is ready
We sent a push notification to all crew members when the upload was finished.
Design System Documentation
This atomic component could be used in many different ways and in a variety of platforms including in our phone, tablet and our web app.
Outcomes
We lit up the last bucket!…
and became the first drone management software to complete the pilots end-to-end workflow.
Pilots saved an average of about 45 minutes per operation!
The feedback on this was pretty awesome! We heard a lot of feedback around stress reduction. Pilots were worrying less about getting back to the office and uploading images straight away.
Disney gained interest!
One of our favorite partner’s began using this regularly and wanted to collaborate with us more. If you’ve seen my case study presentations, you might have heard the Disney one.
Boosted Sales!
25% of sales after the first month of release closed as a direct result of this feature, which translates to roughly $175k in sales.
The completion of the end to end workflow increased annual revenue growth from existing customers by nearly 35%.