What Matters in Professional Drone Pilots’ Practice? An Interview Study to Understand the Complexity of Their Work and Inform Human-Drone Interaction Research

Paper in proceeding, 2021

Human-drone interaction is a growing topic of interest within HCI research. Researchers propose many innovative concepts for drone applications, but much of this research does not incorporate knowledge on existing applications already adopted by professionals. This limits the validity of said research. To address this limitation, we present our fndings from an in-depth interview study with 10 professional drone pilots. Our participants were armed with signifcant experience and qualifcations - pertinent to both drone operations and a set of applications covering diverse industries. Our fndings have resulted in design recommendations that should inform both ends and means of human-drone interaction research. These include, but are not limited to: safety-related protocols, insights from domain-specifc use cases, and relevant practices outside of hands-on fight.