DroneDeploy's core product provides reality capture solutions for construction, energy, and related fields. With the arrival of new technologies such as Gaussian Splats, our 3D Viewer was due for interaction upgrades.
2 Product Designers
1 Product Manager
2 Software Engineers
Research: 1 - 2 weeks
Design: 1 - 2 weeks
The challenge lies in creating a seamless and intuitive experience that mirrors the fluidity of first-person gaming or 3D modeling software, ensuring that users can navigate intricate 3D environments effortlessly.
The component in question was the Control Bar, living in the top right of the 3D and 2D viewer.
The main controls consist of three parts:Â Default View, Controls, and Orbit Point.
A thorough competitive analysis of similar reality capture products, 3D modelling software, and first-person games was conducted to understand how designers bundled controls and keyboard shortcuts to create cohesive experiences.
Our most important clients are the site supervisors, not the drone pilots themselves. These users primarily want to see site progress in a clean, visually descriptive, and accessible way.
As a result, three interactions were designed and surfaced:Â Play Animation, Inspect Model, and Rendering Options.
Mouse controls were taken from the 2D viewer, ensuring a consistent pattern. This was especially useful for building projects with an Interior and Exterior model, as users toggle between them to examine areas of interest.
A combination of on-screen tutorials and informative modals outlined the changes in a non-intrusive way.
The modal features a dark background, ensuring it can be seen on even the most visually complex renderings.
Beyond the scope of this project, I discovered and designed an additional feature to add value to this enhanced 3D viewer - Measurements in 3D.
Reutilizing existing engineering budget for the implemented controls, such as the keyboard controls and orbit point (anchor points), this measurement tool allows users to accurately get distance and area measurements.
Notable features are parallel and perpendicular markers, automatic area calculations, and snap-to functionality.
One of the most valuable lessons I learned was the importance of balancing technical sophistication with usability. The users we were designing for—construction supervisors, energy managers, and other non-technical professionals—needed a tool that felt intuitive and natural, even when handling complex data.
I underestimated the challenge of simplifying something as intricate as navigating a 3D model. It wasn’t just about adding features; it was about crafting interactions that felt smooth, whether users were positioning the camera, teleporting to new areas, or making precise measurements.
Through rounds of testing and iteration, I discovered how small details could dramatically impact the user experience. For example, the responsiveness of the keyboard controls had to strike the perfect balance: too slow, and users felt frustrated; too fast, and they lost control.
Incorporating animated transitions for camera movements proved invaluable for preserving spatial context during navigation. I worked closely with developers to ensure the interactions I envisioned could be implemented smoothly, and user testing sessions reminded me to always empathize with the end user’s perspective.
Dronedeploy acquired StructionSite in 2022 and was wrapping up engineering efforts to unify the platforms to fully migrate all legacy StructionSite customers over to the DroneDeploy platform. One of the remaining tasks is to deliver PDF exports of interior views, i.e. floor plans and site plans.
This feature has very high visibility and usage. In one week alone, an average of 2, 820 PDFs are exported. This represents approx. 550 unique maps, 243 customers, and 130 companies.
1. Allow the user to export an interior PDF with the same features as StructionSite, plus new DroneDeploy features
2. Keep the usability similar so that users don't experience a steep learning curve
3. Make sure that the components and screens scale easily for Exterior exports, an upcoming feature
Each page has the following information in a header/footer:
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1. Project Name
2. Level Name
3. Exported On timestamp
4. Filters Applied (if any)
5. Dates
6. Media types excluded (easier to list excluded than included)
This was an insightful project and pushed me to think in the problem space of a clientele acquisition. I had to directly interview customers to understand their use cases as we had no previous research on the feature.
On the design side, I was challenged to learn and design for information hierarchy, understanding of cognitive overload and marketing material requirements. I went through multiple iterations with different components, learning the limitations of a sidebar.