Colloquia

Samenvatting

Avy develops fixed-wing VTOL drones designed for missions with high social and environmental impact, including medical delivery, emergency response, and nature conservation. As the company considers expanding into larger, more capable UAVs in line with its mission to unlock the sky, it faces the challenge of navigating design trade-offs and uncertain markets without a structured framework to guide early product decisions.

This thesis addresses that need by developing a practical tool that supports strategic decision-making in the earliest phases of UAV development. Avy's current decision-making processes often rely on intuition and ad hoc insights, which can limit alignment between vision, technical feasibility, and market needs. Especially when exploring unfamiliar application areas.

Using a research-by-design approach, the tool was developed and iteratively refined through multiple use cases in the offshore market. These cases explored how UAVs could reduce reliance on helicopters and vessels for offshore transport, revealing specific requirements around range, payload, delivery mechanisms, and regulatory constraints.

The resulting tool helps Avy by capturing stakeholder needs, structuring product requirements, and visualising key trade-offs between design directions. It offers a reasoning process that supports internal alignment and provides a transparent basis for complex decisions, enabling Avy to act with more confidence and clarity as it explores new opportunities.

This thesis delivers lasting value by formalising a method Avy can use not only for the offshore market but also as a repeatable framework to guide future product development efforts in any new domain.