image of drone with mountain in background

Verizon - Skyward

Lead Product Designer, Mobile

Live Video

In 2 months, We improving how film directors discover great locations and added another way for drone teams to collaborate, watching live video.

Role

Lead Product Designer, Mobile

Team

iOS engineering, PM, web platform, Disney Beta partner

Partners

Disney, FAA Verizon's 5G team

Context

At the time, Disney’s location scouts captured drone footage for directors to review later. So, a request for another angle could mean another site visit. We worked with directors and location scouts to built live video into Skyward the two parties could see the same things at the same time, remotely.

I led mobile design and set the direction for web, building on familiar Skyward patterns.

Disney streamed roughly 100 times in the first two months. Brasfield & Gorrie and John Deere adopted it for construction and agriculture.

Pilots didn't trust automated flight. The FAA's airspace regulations were dense enough that even experienced pilots made mistakes. I designed one cohesive experience that made the entire workflow feel safe, clear, and trustworthy.

$700K SOW

21

Pending deals closed

+20%

usage increase from planning through sharing

40 scenes

used in Disney movies in 2021

$xxxK SOW

40 scenes

used in Disney movies in 2021

+20%

usage increase from planning through sharing

After - with live video

Directors could watch the flight in real-time, asking to see more of an area, and make decisions while the scout was still on location.

Before

Scouts captured drone footage for directors to review later. If a director wanted another angle, it could mean another trip.

Outcome

Outcome

Skyward's mobile apps evolved from planning tools into a complete pilot workflow.

Our of our strategic goals was to offer an end to end pilot solution. This was 3 buckets - planning, flying and sharing. With another play at how we enable sharing for team, we started to see some interesting use cases from other customers in construction and real-estate as well.

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© 2026 Gregory Bauwens

© 2026 Gregory Bauwens