Towards Urban Air Mobility: Exploring how to support collaborative planning and communication in drone projects

Abstract

As drones become integrated into urban contexts, stakeholders such as city planners and drone operators must collaborate to plan, regulate, and execute operations. However, many lack a shared understanding of drone capabilities, regulatory processes, and planning requirements, leading to coordination challenges. This paper presents an exploratory investigation of two prototypes supporting collaborative drone work: a Planning Platform for structuring multi-stakeholder planning and a Library of Explanatory Stories for communicating foundational concepts. Developed through iterative engagement with an expert drone operator and evaluated with municipality representatives and drone operator trainees, the findings indicate that structured visual planning supports coordination, risk awareness, and shared reference points, while storytelling aids initial understanding. At the same time, challenges related to digital literacy, organizational integration, narrative simplification, and visual credibility were identified. The paper contributes both the design of these prototypes and a set of design principles for structuring interaction and translating complex domain knowledge to support shared understanding in multi-stakeholder drone work.