Chasing Lions: Co-Designing Human-Drone Interaction in Sub-Saharan Africa
This work addresses the problem of integrating drones in sub-Saharan Africa for stakeholders, but it is incremental as it focuses on gathering perspectives rather than developing new methods or technologies.
The study tackled the lack of research on stakeholders' perspectives on drones in sub-Saharan Africa by conducting a human-drone interaction user study with experts, resulting in findings that highlight novel applications, cultural and social design aspects, and the need for diverse perspectives in design.
Drones are an exciting technology that is quickly being adopted in the global consumer market. Africa has become a center of deployment with the first drone airport established in Rwanda and drones currently being used for applications such as medical deliveries, agriculture, and wildlife monitoring. Despite this increasing presence of drones, there is a lack of research on stakeholders' perspectives from this region. We ran a human-drone interaction user study (N=15) with experts from several sub-Saharan countries using a co-design methodology. Participants described novel applications and identified important design aspects for the integration of drones in this context. Our results highlight the potential of drones to address real world problems, the need for them to be culturally situated, and the importance of considering the social aspects of their interaction with humans. This research highlights the need for diverse perspectives in the human-drone interaction design process.