Maritime search and rescue (SAR) is an area which can benefit from the constant advancements in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology. Using UAVs to search an area can serve as a replacement for a helicopter which is both cost effective and can save time and thereby lives. The challenge is to implement an interface for the incident commander, who is the person in charge on the scene, to support the need functionality while maintaining a high situational awareness, performance and an appropriate workload.

Previous work on SAR operations have studied the effects of conventional-, predictive- and virtual reality interfaces in relation to situational awareness and workload. The results showed that virtual reality increased situational awareness, however the results for the effects of conventional vs predictive interfaces were inconclusive, and more research was suggested.

The research problem is to figure out what effect a predictive human swarm interface will have on situational awareness, workload and performance. A study is conducted to measure these variables and experts are brought in to develop a set of design guidelines.

The platform for the study is developed as a progressive web application which will run on an iPad Pro. The study was conducted with ten participants and through contextual interviews with three experts.

The results of the study showed significant difference in human workload in favor of the predictive interfaces. Performance measurements showed that the predictive intrusive interface had the best performance. Furthermore design implications developed in collaboration with experts are presented.