SailingRecord

Competition web platform for sailors, where you upload your tracks and then rank and compare your results with other users within different challenges.

CLIENT

Seascape d.o.o.

MY ROLE

User/Product Research | Analysis |
Workshop facilitation | UX/UI Design

VIEW PROJECT

www.sailing-record.com

SailingRecord started as an idea, five years ago, how to distill complex sailing boat performance in a single number. This proved to be extremely effiecient in differentiating our boats towards the competition.

Today, Seascape d.o.o. is part of the largest leisure boat producer Group Beneteau. SailingRecord’s role is now expanding to allow each of Group’s boat owners engage with each-other through the data, even if physical movement in society might be restricted.

Andraž mihelin, seascape ceo

Problems

Participation in sailing events is decreasing.
Only 30% of Seascape owners are active in Seascape community.
There is a lot of bullshit in sailing when it comes to boat performance numbers.
Boat performance is defined by polar diagrams. They look and sound very complicated.
Seascape is a performance cruiser (SSC brand promise). The company needs a way to prove that.

Goals

Make sail racing more fun.
> people could compete with each other regardless of the time and place
> you can go sailing in your own time and chosen conditions and still compete against everybody else that takes part of a given challenge
Putting credible single number on boats performance.
> this should simplify people’s understanding of particular boats performance beside the standard polars, that show boats overall average performance (ex. what is given boats maximum speed on 500m)
Differentiate Seascape as performance cruiser.
> show of the top potential of these boats
> help sales
Building Seascape community.
> motivate people to join classic events since they are engaged already on-line

Design objectives

Create a Minimum Viable Product.
> due to limited resources find out what we realy need for this to work and to attract early adopters
Design and concept should already have built in attachment points for further upgrades of the platform.
Find and solve main potential issues.
> ex. privacy, credibility, desirability …

Result

Responsive web platform linked to Sentinel telemetry platform.

The Design Process

I like tackling problems with iterative design approach.
I’m explaining more about it here.

Research

Through desk research, interviews with key stakeholders, brainstorming workshop with extended Seascape team and comparative research, we explored user needs and motivations in parallel with user, bussines and technical requirements.

Deliverable:
insights

Main problems extracted at brainstorming workshop

Synthesis

By taking into account all findings, we developed a design brief and decided on the scope of the project. We defined a potential user, platform concept and issues to address, like user privacy, track credibility and verification, motivation, scalability etc.

Deliverable:
design brief

Our Persona > a typical SailingRecord platform user and an early adopter

Concept

We started with the first sketches and the visualization of user experience throughout the platform (J ou ney map highres pdf).
We continued with wireframes and during this phase some conceptual challenges came up to be solved.
Our findings with new solutions were implemented in next iteration of wireframes, that we tested on users.

Deliverables:
insights from interviews and workshop, wireframes, paper prototype

First wireframe sketches

Sketch / Low fidelity wireframe / SailingRecord

User Journey Map

Final platform conclusions:

Design

After testing and few more iterations, visual identity of the platform and the final screens were designed. My aim was a clean, modern look and I used red for contrast to emphasize CTAs and reaching our goals on each page.

Deliverables:
visual identity, web design, priorities guideline, usability test report

Logotype and color palette:

Challenge badges:

Testing and Implementation

ALPHA TESTING.
Implement findings.
BETA TESTING.
Final tweaking.
INTEGRATION into Sentinel Marine platform.

Deliverable:
responsive web platform www.SailingRecord.com

Possible further upgrades

definitely the next step should be making a mobile app
> that would simplify data grabbing
> adds the possibility of notifications
include cruisers
> add cumulative challenges
offer a log book and track analysis
> they both require more data storage and more programming
sponsored challenges

If you are interested, I’m happy to talk and explain more in depth about the process of making this event, about our findings and decisions during the process.