Drone Awareness 2

Drone Awareness Final Report Date: ​November 27, 2017

Team Name:

Doug

Affiliation:

Mechanical Engineering at York University

Team Members: Iyob Muchie Maryam Hassaballah Isaac Andrade Mahgoub Mohamed

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Objectives of the Project Doug will be trying to raise awareness about drone safety to manufacturers and users of drones to show the public the dangers of misusing drones and the consequences they may occur with misuse. We are hoping to reach to as many stakeholders as possible to make drone usage be more responsible which would eliminate many problems like privacy invasions, safety concerns, and disturbing the public in general. One more objective we want to reach is to improve regulations over usage of drones. We would like to see a governing body regulate drone use by; having fines implemented for misuse of drones and not have just anyone be able to use drones, which could be done by allowing only those who hold drone usage licenses to use or purchase one. Goals Achieved ●

An Infographic was created, with plans to submit it to the student newspaper, Excalibur. (We want this article to highlight the dangers of drone use).

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An Infographic was distributed to individuals within our university and common community to spread our knowledge of drone dangers to the public through advertising our campaign on social media outlets (Collected information and statistics about drones, taken from various sources).

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In depth research into both drone sales, and well as drone accident statistics, which provided us with an understanding of how pressing of an issue this was.

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Various intrinsic forms of communication between group members were used to boost productivity. These methods include a Whatsapp group chat to establish fast communication / idea sharing, as well as a Google Drive for easy file sharing.

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We conducted verbal surveys with peers at York University to achieve a sense of public knowledge on the topic.

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An exhibition day station was created to present our project idea to our peers. Feedback was collected, and our project was altered accordingly in an attempt to increase our overall impact. Demonstrate the Impact of the Project It is important to address raising awareness and promoting safety about drones to not

only the public who utilize the drones but also to the manufacturer's. Educating the public on safety will promote responsibility and benefit in the process of adaption of Drones.

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However, if we do not follow through with promotion of safety this can lead to consequences such as misuse through the use the infographics these issues would be highlighted and demonstrated with the use of data and schematics . A goal that we set and achieved is to influence and impact as many people as possible through advertising our campaign on various media outlets. By doing so were able to educate people of our cause and benefit them in many ways that they would have not recognized without our campaign and this was done through the coverage our campaign brought for our community to grow. In hopes to simplify the access to drones we have categorized them and where they can be used. This will help people gain insights on where to buy and use the right types of drones for whatever their specific need may be. This information will be allocated through the use of social media advertisements, pamphlets, and posters. Methods that Best Worked to Allow Achieving the Goals of the Project After the responses we got from our fellow classmates and the TA’s about our project. We realised that explaining our goals to individuals verbally and through infographics was the best way to achieve our goals. We saw that more people started to truly understand the purpose of our project and our message when we previewed our infographic to them. Although it has not been yet approved to be printed out in the Excalibur newspaper; we still saw interactions and responses that were positive towards what we are doing and that allowed us to realise that we are not the only ones that are being affected by the drones issue. We are also very glad to have had the chance to give other people new information about drones and their harmful sides through our presentation in the past and the infographic we have done recently which worked very effectively. We were able to make them think twice before buying or using a drone and had them know the effects of its misuse as well as gave them information to tell others who may think that drones are harmless. One more thing that worked very well in achieving the goals we had for our project was relying on social media (twitter, facebook, surveys). Since we are in an age where technology and social media is a main part of our daily lives, we thought of bringing our project outside of the university and into those internet outlets. We were very pleased with the many interactions we got from other people and the feedback from others was helpful to us as well because it made us learn more about this issue from different point of views and have a better understanding about how it is real and how it is affecting a large population of people not just some.

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Largest Challenge of Project The largest challenge of the project was finding an outlet where we could bring our project into the view of a larger population. Our initial plans were to contact local newspapers and create an article about the dangers of civilian drone use, and have the newspapers publish our article. Our primary newspaper choice was the local York University student newspaper ‘Excalibur’, because we believed that they would be the most likely to publish an amatuer article. Unfortunately, we were unable to have our article reach a final edition, and were forced to find a new outlet. With limited time left before our deadline we decided to use the internet to spread our message, and narrowed down our choice to a social media post as it would be seen by all of our followers. We changed our article format to an infographic to be more eye-catching and brief, hopefully leading to less people skipping over our post. A benefit of using social media over a traditional newspaper is the speed at which our project can be spread. It can be instantly shared with thousands of people, living in multiple countries in only a matter of seconds. Even though our original plan for spreading awareness was unsuccessful, we found an alternative that is potentially more effective, and could have a larger impact. Description and Implementation of the Solution, and Devised Gimmick Our goal was to create a rhetorical awareness solution. We did this by collecting facts on the misuse of drones and the harm it can cause. We did not want to deter consumers from purchasing drones, but instead instruct them to use them responsibly. Another solution we proposed was to find legal means to restrict the misuse of drones. For example, age limits and licensing could be used so that drone users could be held accountable for their misuse. Our devised gimmick was an infographic poster that could be either printed off and handed to strangers/posted on walls, or posted on various social media sites. On this infographic we included statistics on the growth of the drone industry, rise of police reports involving drones, and the demographics of those using drones.

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Synopsis of Communication Achievements There were two types of communication used by our group during the planning and execution of our project; internal and external. For internal communication between group members a Whatsapp group chat was created for simple, and fast communication between group members. Group meeting times, project deadlines, and idea sharing was all communicated through use of our group chat. We also created a shared folder on Google Drive, for easy file sharing, and a convenient space to store all project work. Our external method of communication was our use of social media to share our infographic. This allowed us to reach a large amount of people in a very short period of time. Lessons Learned After trying different methods to try and achieve our goals for this project; like doing an article in the newspaper or contacting bigger authorities like transit canada. We learned that the best way to achieve our goals is to influence and impact as many people as possible first, because a change would not be made if a problem is never seen. We learned that we got many more feedbacks and positive interactions towards our project when we went to the people themselves and showed them our ideas and our thoughts; they gave us their own thoughts as well and they were encouraging us to move forward with what we have started because this does affect a large number of people. We learned that when we present our project to many people and have the bigger authorities look at the amount of people who would be more than happy to try and make a change about the drones issue, it would actually be taken into consideration because we would be more than just a group of people doing a school project; we would be a large group of people trying to make a difference. What failed with us was trying to get our article approved and published by the Excalibur newspaper. We provided them with a summary of our article to let them know what our goals were and why it was important for us to let the word out about the drones issue. Although we were disappointed that we never got a response from them, we were very pleased to see how others in the social media community were giving us the support and positive feedback for what we were doing. So this taught us that social media is a strong outlet for making a change and putting the word out; it is also the fastest way to get our goals through since people can easily access the internet from their phones and view our project and give us feedback on it by a touch on the screen.

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The most important thing that we learned while working on our project is that drones are very powerful tools and objects that can be helpful or harmful to us depending on how we use them. Their misuse is very common these days and many people are getting effected by them either because of privacy issues or physical harm from getting hit by them or many other ways. We learned that with the right audience and a good presentation of topic, we would be able to make a difference in the use of drones which would help so many people who have been or might get effected by their misuse. Acknowledgement of Outside Individuals/Organizations There were many outside individuals and organizations that played a role in the execution of our project. One of such organisations was Facebook, which allowed us to post our infographic and spread our message. This in turn allowed various individuals to like and share our post so that our message would reach a wider range of people. Another group of individuals that’s critical to our project is the consumers. At the end of the day, the consumers are responsible for the proper use of drones and the consequences of their misuse. Our goal to highlight the dangers of drone use and to promote safe drone usage was geared towards the average consumer as they are the ones using the product. One organization that is in line with our objectives is Transport Canada. Their roles was to propose new rules and regulations that restrict the improper usage of drones. This in turn prompts consumers to properly use their drones. Recommendations for Future Work to Continue this Project There are many recommendations that could be made for the future of our project. Firstly, we can attempt to achieve our future goal of publishing a newspaper article. This would allow us to use the paper’s existing reader base to extend our message upon. Also, we could attempt to contact various drone manufactures and present to them various facts and data. With concrete evidence we could attempt to convince the companies of the benefits of putting safety limits on their products. We may also continue to distribute our infographic in person to various groups of people or spread it around on social media. We could also contact our local government offices to make them aware of the various safety concerns of drones. A long-term goal would be to get laws/ by-laws implemented that restrict the use of drone usage. On a teamwork basis, the current teamwork dynamic works well and should not be changed, as our team is very efficient.