First Mate — Upgrading the Fishing Charter Industry
“Here we are the final two weeks of my time at Ironhack Miami. Just like that, seven weeks have flown by and when this article is published I will have already graduated. Going into the program everyone told me how intense these nine weeks would be, but I don’t think I would change any of it. In nine weeks I have learned a tremendous amount and made a number of new friends. Before I am able to close out this fist stage of my Ironhack career it is now time to share my final project…”
Project Brief — Develop a new mobile application for the fishing charter industry
Roles: Market, Trend, and User Researcher, Interaction Designer, Art Director, and UI Developer.
Prior to the beginning of our final project each student had the option to be paired with one of three real-life clients or bring in a client with educator approval. Living in South Florida, I took the opportunity to “get hired” by a local fishing/charter captain based in the Florida Keys.
Once each student had their decision for their final project, I had the chance to sit down and conduct a number of zoom conference calls with “my employer”. From these calls. I was able to take note of problems and pain points that he and his industry were facing along with his initial vision for the mobile application.
The Problem
Fishing charter and boat rental captains are finding it difficult to manage and organize their business while trying to simultaneously entertain their current customers. Many if not all captains/charters still use the old-school method of tracking their bookings in a hand-written calendar (think big desk calendar) while also spending a lot of time on the phone answering customer questions.
Primary User — Captains & Charter Boat Rental Brands
Secondary User — Users who would be researching and making a booking
Understanding what some of the initial problems were, it was now time to dive into the design process — “Next stop the Discover Phase”.
Discover
In the discovery stage I used a number of research and data synthesization tools to help me uncover the additional pain points and frustrations from the primary and secondary consumer.
Competitive Feature Analysis
In order to provide the primary and secondary users with a product that would have little to no competition in the marketplace, I had to identify where the potential Blue Ocean would be. To do this, I conducted a competitive feature analysis of direct and indirect competitors within the current market.
Having what seemed to be an abundance of time since this was a two week project, I was able to compare five (5) direct and nine (9) indirect competitors. From the analysis I uncovered a few trends that I could potentially focus around, but ultimately decided to focus on the themes of informative and personalization.
Market Positioning
Using the themes uncovered from the feature analysis, I applied personalization and informative to the x & y-axis respectively.
Applying the variable of low to high as the measurement indicator, I placed each of the direct and indirect competitors within the market positioning chart. Once all the competitors were labeled, along with what I also assume to be a bit of sorcery, did I locate the blue ocean.
“If you can’t tell from the picture or just decided to skip over it entirely…………. the blue ocean laid within the upper right quadrant correlating to highly-informative and highly-personalized.”
Lean UX Canvas
Blue ocean in hand, I needed to further define the primary and secondary users that I would want to target. Using the ever so handy Lean UX Canvas, I defined the primary and secondary users as:
- Primary User —Fishing charters, boat captains, charter employees
- Secondary User —Travel agents, people who either fish or travel regularly, “the everyday user”
User Research
Having a solid foundation of pain points from the captain I moved into developing my interview and survey questions. Before sending out the survey or conducting additional interviews, I spoke with one interviewee initially to be sure that the questions I asked would provide quantifiable data.
With a quick pivot and change to my questions, I sent out the survey and moved into conducting additional interviews.
Quantitative Research — 28 Survey Responses
Using google forms I developed a total of eleven (11) survey questions that would help define demographic along with user travel and booking methods/history.
- The median age group was 55+ years old
- 68% — said that they are likely to read (10+) reviews before making a booking
- 32% — said that they are likely to contact the guide prior to the scheduled booking date
- 68% — said that their preferred method of receiving information is via email
Qualitative Research — 10 Interviews
With my survey all grown up and on it’s own, I now had to focus on reconnecting with mankind through the interview technique.
During my encounters, I took a notebook’s worth of information and data that interviewees were willing to share with me. I also made sure to take down a couple key quotes that would help me further in the process.
“I am always using my calendar. If I don’t have the info, 9 out of 10 times I will mess up the arrival times and dates”
“I like being able to customize my booking or even do a private booking if it is offered.”
“The worst is when I have pull out my wallet when I first arrive for my booking. The last thing I want to do is think about the money at that point in time”
Having all this data can seem quite overwhelming, but luckily I have an arsenal of techniques and tools that will help me organize and make sense of all the data collected from the user research.
Define
First tool up, was the Affinity map. When used in the correct manner the affinity mapping will assist in organizing the data into groups or themes. Only once you have organized all the data is it good practice to than provide a label to each of the groupings or themes.
From the affinity map, I was able to summarize my findings into the following:
- Users are very keen on reviews and will most likely based their decision based off the feedback from others
- Users are more likely to make a reservation or booking if they saw something about it on social media
- Users want to have all the information provided to them before making a decision
- Captains & Charter companies want to find a way to spend less time interacting with customers in the early stages of the booking process
Value Proposition Canvas
With key findings from the affinity map in my back pocket, I turned my focus to the customer side of the value proposition canvas. The customer helps define the pains, gains and user jobs also known as the Jobs to Be Done.
Pains — Primary & secondary users can be overwhelmed, secondary users feel unprepared, primary users are spending time speaking on the phone
Gains — More time entertaining customers, more time with family & friends, less time being spent in a state of confusion
User Jobs — Organize and manage a business, find or provide recommendations, meet like minded people, find answers to questions, be entertained, earn revenue
User Persona
To help better visualize and empathize with our primary user, I created a user persona.
With the user persona in place, I moved into developing the As-Is Map to define the phases of the user experience along with potential correlating thoughts, emotions, and physical interactions.
As-Is Map
For this As-Is Map, I settled on the following five phases that a user would potentially encounter:
Phase 1 — Searching for an application and downloading the application
Phase 2 — Creating an account and customizing their profile
Phase 3 — Developing their personal calendar, setting up charter and launching their page
Phase 4 — Reviewing & confirming bookings and requesting deposit/payments
Phase 5 — Confirming needs and logistics for secondary user, requesting/receiving full payment, and conducting the activity/experience
Journey Map
Using the five phases from the As-Is tool, I developed the user journey map to visualize the high’s and low’s of the user experience. Journey mapping is also helpful in visualizing potential design opportunities.
I was able to identify at least one pain point within each of the five phases of the user journey.
Phase 1 — Provide a mobile application that can assist with the organization of a captains booking calendar
Phase 2 — Allow captains & users to create profiles where they can set preferences on who they would like to entertain or be entertained by
Phase 3 —Provide a way for captains to spend less time inputting data into their booking calendar
Phase 4 — Improve the deposits process and tracking of what is either outstanding or paid.
Phase 5 — Streamline the payment process, confirm user arrival times and ensure they are aware of what they will need to bring
These design opportunities will provide a firm foundation to develop the Problem Statement(s) and correlating “How Might We” statements.
Brainstorming
The problem statements and correlating “How Might We’s” were used as the platform to brainstorm potential ideas and solutions that I could implement into the mobile application. With the help of classmates, I wrote down every idea or solution that came to mind. Once all the brainstorming was finished, I organized all the ideas and solutions using the MoSCoW Method.
MoSCoW Method
While I wish the MoSCoW Method had something to do with the Russian City or really just vodka, it is still helpful when trying to prioritize features.
Once I had my MoSCoW tool setup, it was now time to begin placing each of the brainstormed features or solutions into the categories of “Must Have, Should Have, Could Have, Won’t Have”. Hopefully you could guess that once all the ideas were placed, I would focus my attention to the “Must Have’s & Should Have’s”.
Must Have — Primary & secondary user profiles, detailed charter information, booking calendar, digital payment, FAQ’s
Should Have — Primary & secondary user reminders, fully-refundable cancellations, pre-set gratuity option, direct messaging
Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
Having clear direction from the use of the MoSCoW Method, I was now in the position to develop my MVP.
“A fishing charter booking and business management mobile application, encompassing a variety of features that will allow primary and secondary users to create profiles, set preferences, request/confirm availability along with providing all the relevant and important information related to a specific primary users.”
As you can see the MVP encompasses everything we have learned and brainstormed during the initial stages of the process. With the MVP clearly defined I was now ready to move towards developing my prototypes.
Site Map & User Flow
Before drawing up the prototypes, I developed a Site Map and User Flow to help ensure that we included and stayed within the parameters of the MVP.
The site map pictured above is what you could call the skeleton of the application. It shows the initial underlying paths that user would be able to take when traveling within the app. While the user flow may seem very similar, it does provide an additional depth of detail in visualizing each of the possible tasks.
Another benefit of the user flow is the opportunity to visualize the “Happy Path”. The green line on the image above, dictates what I believe to be the simplest and quickest path a user would taken when accomplishing the task of calendar management.
Delivery
With time winding down on the two week sprint, I moved into the final stage of the double diamond also known as the Delivery stage. To begin this stage, I started by developing what I would call a lo/mid-fi prototype.
Once I had the prototype in a spot that I was initially happy with, I uploaded it to the usability testing website — Maze.design — Maze is so useful in the era of COVID, as it allowed me to interact with my testers in a virtual setting.
Since it was sort of a hybrid prototype, I spent additional time conducting usability testing and making the necessary adjustments. From the first few rounds of usability testing I received the following stats:
- Average time on task — 15 seconds
- Mis-Click rate — 30%
- Bounce rate — 15%
While not overly thrilled with these initial stats, I made some tweaks and was comfortable with moving into developing my style guide and hi-fi prototype.
Attributes, Moods & Styles
Before I just started picking random colors and fonts, I wanted to give the application a sense of feeling and emotion. In order to do this I developed the following brand attributes:
- Informative
- Fun
- Reliable
- Friendly
From these brand attributes I put together the first iteration of my mood board. I use the mood board as a test template for potential colors, font families and textures.
Again, with the help of some classmates, family and friends, I conducted usability testing to get qualitative data.
- Green colors don’t fit and should be taken out
- The ocean texture was a “Must Have” among testers
- Tatuage & Copperplate were most liked font families
After a couple changes based off the feedback from testers, I developed the correlating style tile.
My choices for the style tile, will be used as the foundation for all the components in our app.
Atomic Hi-Fi
Style tile in hand, I quickly developed my atomic design inventory and moved into designing my hi-fi prototype.
To stay organized and ensure of a clean handoff to the development team, I began with establishing components within Adobe XD. This would ensure that I wouldn't have to go through each individual screen to make the change.
This first iteration of the hi-fi prototype included roughly twenty-four screens. Allowing users to experience the flow of creating an account, setting custom charters, and viewing/managing their calendar.
By the time I had this prototype in a spot that I was happy with it was the final day of our sprint. Now it was time to look back on my process and reflect on what was uncovered these past two weeks.
Conclusion
With this project and my time at Ironhack coming to and end, it was a very bitter sweet feeling. On one side, I felt a lot more confident in my processes now having gone through my second two week sprint. On the other, I was quite emotional as I would be leaving the safe haven of Ironhack and going out on my own.
Before closing this chapter, I put together a list of next steps for the stakeholder. This would allow them to review what has been accomplished so far and what more would be needed to get the product to market.
Next Steps
- Buildout secondary user flow
- Finalize hi-fi prototype
- Develop a responsive web design
- Continue usability testing (primary & secondary flows)
- Review and garner feedback from client
- Update atomic inventory
- Prepare files for developer hand-off
