Smooth sailing. Shared joy.

Embarking on a Design Adventure

Witness the captivating journey as we set sail on the design process behind Argonaut, the revolutionary mobile app for sharing boats between friends. From the initial stormy seas of brainstorming to the final docking at the perfect design, no stone was left unturned.

Charting the Course: Key Design Stages

Explore the visual progression of the app’s interface and experience design.

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Initiating the Voyage:
Disovery Phase

I started by defining a user profile for interviewee selection: individuals who have experience with recreational boat sharing. This could include boat club members, boating enthusiasts, or people who have in the past privately shared an item with peers, such as car sharing.


Luckily, I quickly found 4 individuals with direct boat sharing experience, both formally, within a club, and informally, between friends.

Interviewee Profiles

Boating Enthusiast

Frequently shares a boat with friends for leisure. Lives pretty far from the sea but takes every opportunity to drive to where her boat is docked and unwind.

Novice Boat Sharer

He is new to boat sharing among friends. Has recently joined a boat club and is learning the ropes.

Recreational Boat Owner

Owns a small yacht which he shares with a close friend. Uses the boat for leisure activities, such as vacations or fishing.

Boat Club Member

A seasoned member of a boat club. Actively participates in shared boat ownership within the club, but also privately. Lives in a port town.

Semi-structured Interviews

  • Q1: What are the most significant challenges you encounter when planning and using a shared boat with friends?

    • Coordinating schedules and double-bookings is cause for frustration

    • Understanding how to use a club's boat booking system

    • Managing tasks is cumbersome: "it's easy to forget when something needs attention"

  • Q2: How do you currently reserve the boat when you or your friends want to use it?

    • Mostly group chats or phone calls; "a bit chaotic" and no record of the reservation

    • A shared spreadsheet; "it's functional, but not very user-friendly"

    • Asking senior club members to book it on their behalf

  • Q3: What is your approach to handling maintenance and repairs for the shared boat?

    • Relying on memory makes maintenance a hassle and means that "things get overlooked"

    • "I'm not sure when maintenance is needed"

    • Sometimes even scheduled tasks are missed, leading to costly repairs

    • Finding the right service providers is a struggle

  • Q4: How do you and your friends communicate and coordinate boat-related activities among yourselves?

    • Mainly through text messages for convenience; "we sometimes forget who's responsible for what"

    • Club emails or club forum, but "it could be more streamlined"

  • Q5: Have you ever used any apps or digital tools for managing shared boat usage? What features would you expect from such an app?

    • No app was comprehensive enough to meet all our needs

    • "I'm open to trying one if it simplifies our process"

    • An app would be a helpful guide through the reservation process

Key Insights

Users face scheduling and coordination challenges when planning boat outings with friends.

Users lack efficient tools to ensure timely maintenance and repairs. They struggle to find the right service provdiers,

Users rely on informal communication (texts and phone calls), which often leads to scheduling conflicts and confusion.

User-friendliness was emphasized. They expect an intuitive interface that acts as a "helpful guide".

Setting Sail:
Define Phase

Problem Definiton

Users lack an intuitive app that guides them through the boat reservation and maintenance process, ensuring smooth communication and collaboration between boat owners.

Primary Persona

Sarah, The Boat Lover

Age: 32

Occupation: Marketeer

Location: Miami, Florida

Marital status: Engaged

Sarah, a young professional residing in Miami, Florida, shares a recreational boat with her fiancé, Michael, and their close circle of friends. They bought the boat collectively to enjoy Florida waters on weekends and holidays. Sarah is a marketeer recognized for her organizational abilities and passion for the outdoors.

Goals

Efficient Scheduling: ensure boat outings don't clash with her work or others' schedule.

Simple Maintenance: help tracking and coordinating tasks with her co-owners.

Easy Communication: seamless communication within their boat-sharing group.

Pains

Coordinating schedules with friends and husband for boat outings.

Reliance on text messages and phone calls for communication.

Difficulty in tracking maintenance tasks and finding trustworthy service providers.

Limited time for recreational activities due to her job.

App Preferences

A user-friendly mobile app with an intuitive interface for easy scheduling, maintenance tracking, and communication.

Shared calendars, real-time availability, and in-app messaging to streamline scheduling and coordination.

A dedicated section that connects users with trusted service providers.

Navigating Rough Waters:
Develop Phase

Onboarding guide

Users can quickly understand how this product adds value to their boating experience through this 3-step onboarding guide: seamless reservation, simplified maintenance and upkeep, and overall an enjoyable boat sharing experience.

Quick glance

Users' need for simplification and timeliness led me to create a home screen that provides, at a quick glance, an overview of the most important information regarding the boat.

The app tells you the boat's availability right now, the local weather, the boat's location, details on the next booking and on the next maintenance task.

Users also have access to quick functions such as booking, reporting damage, or chatting with their co-owners.

Booking the boat

To tackle users' scheduling and coordination challenges, the booking page offers a shared calendar where previously booked dates are blocked out.

The booking process consists of a simplified form requesting number of guests, dates, pick-up and drop-off location.

Tracking location

Users can quickly see where the boat is docked or set a new docking location. For convenience, the "Get directions" button links directly to Google Maps, offering directions to the docking spot.

Simplifying maintenance

One of the biggest issues users face was coordinating maintenance and repair tasks. They had trouble tracking work to be done, as well as past repairs or inspections.

This has been simplified through a clear separation between Upcoming, Past, and Overdue maintenance tasks that each have a status, due date, and assignee.

Users also struggled with finding reliable service providers, They can now contact local mechanics directly through the app.

Reporting damage

Boat damage is a question of safety. Users now have a streamlined way of reporting incidents as they occur. The form asks for all necessary information that a professional might later need when fixing the issue, including vital safety information such as the severity of the damage and whether the boat is still safe to use.

In the event of an emergency, local authorities such as the coast guard or police department can be contacted in-app.

Seamless communication

Boat owners tend to communicate through third party messaging apps, which often leads to scheduling overlaps and organizational mistakes.

The in-app chat feature ensures that boating matters can be discussed separately from every day conversations.

Anchors Aweigh: Deliver Phase

Ahoy, Mates!

Peer through the spyglass and discover how Argonaut transformed the boat-sharing experience for friends daring to rule the high seas together, making waves in the mobile app world.

Try it out!

FAQs

  • What challenges did you identify as you completed the assignment?

    I think the biggest issue was knowing when to stop. I got excited about creating more functionality, more interaction, and ended up delivering a hi-fi prototype of a fully-functioning app.


    Various other challenges I faced were to do with the specific interactive behaviour I was trying to get out of a component, such as the calendar and the task tracking menu.


    I have recently attempted more animation work, which I am trying to include in new projects I take on. This is something that posed some difficulties—for example, getting the appropriate behaviour out of the animated logo on the start screen.

  • If you had an additional day to work on this, what would you improve?

    I would add functionality to track past trips, the distance sailed, and use that to approximate an associated gas cost. I would add cost tracking and splitting, so co-owners can keep track of expenses and divide them equitably.


    I would improve the home page design, look into the overview information I am currently showing and I would try to refine that data, filtering out irrelevancies and adding potentially missing content.


    I would try to squeeze in a quick round of user testing. Getting feedback is the quickest and most efficient way of making sure an app aligns with user goals as intended.

  • If you started from scratch now, what would you do differently?

    I would try and simplify the app even further. I feel that the nav bar could be radically reduced, providing much more compact functionality. I would leave a bit of time to heuristically evaluate the interface, attempt some basic tasks with an evaluative eye, and see where a new user might struggle.

© Andreea Bacanu 2024 All Rights Reserved

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