Cathy Chang

Droneye: Project Management

I acted as the project manager for our startup-styled senior capstone project over spring semester. Documented below are the steps we took to define, visualize, and execute on the project from the project management perspective.

About the project

Problem: Design, build and deploy a system to divert mammalian pests from gardens using non-lethal and humane interventions.

This project is sponsored by HMC INQ, an incubator for startup businesses founded by students and alums of the five undergraduate institutions in the Claremont Consortium. Over the course of two semesters, the HMC INQ clinic team went through the journey of taking on a vague problem, proposing solutions, prototyping solutions, to finally piecing parts together into a fully functional system.

The deliverable was a an autonomous drone for diverting mammalian pests like squirrels and possums that can be replicated with relatively little additional cost and effort.

I acted as the project manager over the spring semester. The startup styled project made the project management process both fun and challenging. Documented below are the structure steps that we took to define, visualize, and execute on the project from the project management perspective. For more details on the project itself, please refer to my post on the system!

  1. About the project
    1. Target Audience
    2. Market Statistics & Current Players
    3. Moving Parts
  2. Full Year Vision
  3. Team Management
  4. R&D Process Management
    1. Imagining System Flow
    2. Research & Prototype
    3. Define User Flow

Target Audience

Countless homeowners, farmers, and others seek non-lethal and humane autonomous interventions to protect their property from mammalian pests such as squirrels, coyotes, and others. Such a system does not currently exist, and even if it does, homeowners will not want to spend >$1000. However, most middle class homeowners who have a family have most likely touched a drone.

Therefore, we decided that our target audiences will have the following qualities:

  • Middle class homeowners 
  • Possess a “suitable” backyard size containing fresh produce
  • Drone hobbyists

According to the report by the Economic Policy Institute, 60% of households by income held about 45% of the nation’s wealth in 2019. 70 million homes in the US are 1-unit detached homes. 

Although the middle class is a complex measure, these statistics show that there is a strong market for this customer segment. This customer segment, in recent years, tends to have high purchasing power and resolute consumer behavior.

Market Statistics & Current Players

After defining the target audience, we spent a week thinking through and researching the problem. Who are the current players? How big is the market?

According to a report published by Statistia in 2021, the current estimated drone market size and prediction is 27.4 billion in 2021, and will rise more than 2x to 58.4 billion by 2026. The number of consumer drone unit shipments in 2021 is 5 million units, and will only grow more as the years go on.

We highlight the two market players that are tackling this issue:

Moving Parts

To understand the system design more, please refer to the post on our system. I will summarize it briefly here:

We have 3 major parts: 

  1. Web app
  2. Drone
  3. Cloudifier (communication between web & drone)

Thanks to the structure we have set in place, we were able to meet all the deadlines and deliverables. To understand the system design more, please refer to the post on our system.

Full Year Vision

There are 4 stages of deliverables:

  1. Piecewise System
  2. Integrated System
  3. Deployable System
  4. Tuned System

Thanks to the structure we have set in place, we were able to meet all the deadlines and deliverables. To understand the system design more, please refer to the post on our system.

Team Management

The PM of the team is tasked with leading the team, fostering innovation, making sure the team is on track with timeline, and communicating with stakeholders. We followed the following 1-week sprint schedule:

This process enabled us to have

  • Streamlined communication process
  • Flexibility to pivot
  • Ample support from liaison & advisor
  • Space for teammates to work on individual contributions

R&D Process Management

Now that we have gone over the project, motivation, and team structure, it is time to delve into the technical management of the project. There are three main parts:

  1. Imagine system flow: Propose, Analyze, Determine
  2. Research & prototype: Prioritize, Split into sub-teams, Go back to previous step and refine
  3. Define user flow
  4. Determine optimal architecture

Imagining System Flow

First, we proposed the system flow:

Then, we came up with strategies and did SWOT analysis:

Through this process, we determined the strengths and tradeoffs, and ultimately settled on 2 important attributes:

  1. Use light on the drone to deter the pests
  2. Fly around in AI determined path

Research & Prototype

Now that we have the important attributes, we used the following framework to guide our research and prototyping:

  1. Prioritize
  2. Split into sub-teams
  3. Prototype & test
  4. Go back to imagining system flow & refine

Define User Flow

Finally, we had a good idea of the capabilities of our product. It was time to piece it together into a seamless system. To do so, we took on a user-oriented perspective by identifying user flow.