Drones
Drones are cool.
Back around 2016, I remember seeing lots of DJI Phantoms flying everywhere. Then regulation caught up and, since then, they’ve faded dramatically from public view. At least from mine. In the US, recreational drones weighing 250 grams or more have to be registered with the FAA. There are tests, airspace rules, ID requirements, and a separate set of rules for commercial operators. America did its American thing. For good reasons. Meanwhile, the commercial sector kept growing. Military and delivery drones regularly make the news. Agricultural, surveying, inspection, and all sorts of industrial drones quietly do their jobs. I love all of it. I’m also slightly freaked out by autonomous systems.
I recently flew a chunky handmade drone built by a local friend. An absurd machine that can comfortably lift a Labrador off the ground. A handy nerd’s dream. I had my own drone dreams as a teenager. I’ve tried the sticks a few times over the years. It’s a bit like driving a manual car. Not especially complicated, but awkward until your hands understand it. Modern drones are forgiving. They stabilize themselves, hold position, follow routes, and generally prevent idiots like me from immediately destroying them. When the wind kicked in, I was happy to let the autopilot do its thing. The drone stabilized almost instantly and corrected its path. I’m no trained pilot, so it takes little to impress me (The coastal wind was intense tbh).
Where I do have a more informed opinion is the controller.
As a kid, I spent some time around a local RC club. The old guys had the fanciest controllers. Big handheld radios with two multidirectional sticks controlling throttle, rudder, elevator, and ailerons. Some had tiny calculator-like LCD screens. Super cool stuff when you’re twelve.
Later, studying electronics, I learned what was inside them. The inputs were mostly analog. Potentiometers measured stick position, then a microcontroller turned those inputs into radio commands. These systems have come a long way. The sticks remain. Almost everything around them has changed. A modern drone controller is a computer with an interface.
Flying is a four-dimensional experience that requires a broad set of factors to be constantly monitored. This isn’t a new problem. Cockpits evolved around it. VFR and IFR instruments turned invisible things into readable ones. Altimeters. Artificial horizons. Navigation systems. Air traffic control. Today we coordinate an absurd number of machines moving through the sky every day with a remarkable degree of precision. Software, and increasingly AI, handles more of the boring and risky parts. That’s the path to scale. You automate what can be automated and leave the human to supervise what can’t, or shouldn’t.
Which brings me back to the controller. Popular consumer drones, especially DJI’s, now feel remarkably close to handheld video game consoles. So does their UI. Slick, visual, and relatively approachable. Commercial and military systems are a different world. Broadly, you see two kinds of interfaces. There are handheld controllers for mobile operations like surveying, agriculture, inspection, and photography. Then there are larger ground-control stations built for longer missions, greater range, more sensors, and more complicated aircraft.
I think of DJI as the Apple of drones. The interface is the product. It has to feel polished because normal people are expected to use it. iPhone users. Gamers. It’s a tool as much as an experience. That’s the power of brand at the intersection of product design.
The rest of the industry often seems to have very different priorities. From all the photos I see online of scientific, industrial, and military drone systems, the same thing keeps showing up. Everything seems to be running on a Windows XP distribution with a UI straight out of Microsoft Visual C++. Nothing is sharp or aligned. Fonts are all over the place. Icons look like clip art from the 2000s. Information hierarchy is rarely considered. Neither is accessibility. There often doesn’t seem to be a design system at all.
We can do better. We probably should.
A chunk of metal falling out of the sky because someone misunderstood a button is a more serious usability problem than accidentally deleting a Spotify playlist. I assume the priority for these companies is getting something in the air. That makes sense. Hardware is hard. Certification is expensive. The interface is probably pretty far down the list. Maybe we're still in the infancy of the UAV era. Maybe the future is fully autonomous. Still, where is my flying car dude?