Aishwarya Ravi
Selected work

Designing clarityat altitude.

Redesigning a drone ground-control workspace around the information and decisions operators need during flight.

Client
BonV Aero
Role
UI/UX Design Intern
Duration
13 weeks · Summer 2026
Focus
Research, interaction design and high-fidelity prototyping
The redesigned ground-control station in map view: status strip, mission map with waypoints and a no-fly zone, attitude instrument, fleet telemetry, picture-in-picture camera and the command panel.

The challenge

One operator. Multiple competing demands.

A ground-control station has to communicate flight status, location, camera information and critical controls at the same time. I focused on organizing those demands into a clearer workspace.

  1. 1Arm state and battery move from small text inside the attitude display to one labelled status strip.
  2. 2Critical actions leave the tabs and get a labelled group of their own, apart from routine controls.
Mission Planner, an open-source ground-control station: attitude display with arming state, a Quick tab of six flight values, tabs for actions and pre-flight, and a satellite map.
The redesigned ground-control station in map view: status strip, mission map with waypoints and a no-fly zone, attitude instrument, fleet telemetry, picture-in-picture camera and the command panel.
Mission Planner is open-source software shown as a competitive reference, not BonV’s original station.

Decision 01

Keep the operator oriented.

I kept essential flight status and controls accessible while allowing the main workspace to switch between the mission map and live video.

Stable workspace. Flexible focus.
The redesigned ground-control station in map view: status strip, mission map with waypoints and a no-fly zone, attitude instrument, fleet telemetry, picture-in-picture camera and the command panel.
Prototype screens. The camera feed is a placeholder.

Decision 02

Make critical actions deliberate.

I separated consequential flight controls from routine actions and designed a checklist and confirmation pattern that makes readiness and intent explicit.

Why this decision

A published usability study of QGroundControl found most users could tell the drone was connected but could not confirm it was ready to fly (Intel UX Design, 2016).

The ground-control station in its dark theme, with the same layout and colour coding.
The pre-flight checklist open over the dimmed station: seven groups of checks, required items tagged, a count of required items and a confirm button.

Decision 03

From one drone to twenty.

I explored how the single-vehicle workspace could expand to support fleet monitoring, with vehicle-specific information and multiple camera feeds.

The project was scoped to one drone. The fleet view is a design exploration, not a deployed capability.
  1. 1Vehicle selection and fleet telemetry. The vehicle selector and fleet table keep every drone’s altitude, battery and speed in view.
  2. 2Multi-camera monitoring. Each tile names its drone and camera; the header counts 16 live of 20 configured.

Outcome

A clearer system, ready for engineering handoff.

  • High-fidelity interactive prototype
  • Documented design decisions and specifications
  • Engineering handoff materials

Early feasibility checks with BonV’s software team kept each decision inside the existing Qt/C++ application and the live MAVLink data it already uses.

Designing for a system I could not rebuild taught me to bring engineers in early. Checking feasibility before a design was final, not after, made every decision easier to defend.

Prototype and handoff only. Implementation in BonV’s application was outside my scope.