---
title: 'UX Assignment ARGONAUT'
disqus: hackmd
---

UX Assignment ARGONAUT
===
###### tags: `UX Design` `Design` `Usability` `User-Centered`

## Table of Contents

[TOC]
## Strategical Questions
First things first I have to get into the right mindset. Working without a team ist always a challenge in itself – in UX especially! To get as many things done in this timeframe I have to do some streamlining.

### Questions

**Where am I now?**
*I have an Assignment to do thats out of my comfort zone. I did no research into the matter yet.*

**How did I get here?**
*I completed all steps needed to get here. I know I can do this.*

**Where am I going?**
*I get as much research and conceptional work done as possible in 4 hours.*

**How will I know when I've arrived?**
*When the 4 hours are over or when I'm satisfied with the deliverables (could be sooner, but I dont think so).*

**Who are the people that will help me get there?**
*I dont have a boat, thats a problem. I need to find people in my network (bc the current world-situation makes it hard to do it in public) that have one or are fond of sharing a boat with others.*

**What do I need to know?**
*I need to know what the difficulties around a boat are.*
* *What are the needs of a boat-user?*
* *What does he need to know to manage things around a boat?*
* *How do they share the financial load and resposibilities?*
* *Is boatsharing even common?*
* *For what users am I designing?*
* *How does the tech work? Are there tools for managing «boat-stuff»?*

**When do I need to get there?**
*I need to get there in 4 hours. (this questionnaire not includet)*

## Time-Management
To get things done in such a short timeframe I need to restrain myself to get all the relevant steps done. So I did a fast Gantt:


> Realisation: the timeframe is unbelievably short. To get a good understanding of the user 4 hours is just not enough. Research is a big part of the task I want to do – I need to understand the context of the app, to get to a product that fits his needs. To understand the user I need to get an understanding of the sharing-economy and what it means to *have* a boat. What I dont want to do – but might have to – is to make a falsifiable hypothesis, that needs to be tested outside of the timeframe.

## Research
### Boatclubs in my region
* [Motorboot Schweiz](https://motorboot-schweiz.ch/kontakt/clubs/)
* [Bootclub Rheinfelden](http://www.bc-rheinfelden.ch/)
* [Zürcher Yacht Club](http://www.zyc.ch/site/index.cfm)
* [Schweizerischer Bodensee-Motorbootclub](http://www.zyc.ch/site/index.cfm)
* [Zürcher Segelclub](https://www.z-s-c.ch/)
* [Pier 7](https://www.pier7.ch/)
* [Nautischer Club Zürich](http://www.ncz.ch/)
* [Bel Vie Bootclub (Company)](https://www.bel-vie.ch/die-idee/)

> Conclusion: There are many types of Boatclubs. Not only are they different in the kind of people they want to attract (societal standing, culture) but also in the type of boats (yachts, motorboats). **This is a point that needs to flow into my personas**.

### Boatsharing services
* [Sailbox](https://www.sailbox.ch/de/home)
* [Nauticas](https://www.nauticas.ch/)
* [SwissBoatSharing](https://www.swissboatsharing.ch/de/home)
* [GanzSharing](https://www.ganzsharing.ch/home/home)
* [Sailcom](https://www.sailcom.ch/de/home)
* [Click&Boat](https://www.clickandboat.com/de/)
* [boat24](https://www.boot24.ch/chde/charter/)

> Conclusion: Many companias already do boatsharing. But there is one difference, compared with the briefing. They are companies with a similar approach to AirBnB. They are posting advertisements and you can book them – there seems no boat-administration in itself to be part of the deal. **boat-administration as a focus is an unique selling point and needs to be the focus and core of the app**.

### Relevant Articles on the Web
* https://mobilitymag.de/boatsharing/
* https://sail24.com/news/boatsharing-sailsquare-kommt-nach-deutschland/
* https://www.eda.admin.ch/smno/de/home/hochseejachten-und-kleinboote.html
* https://www.admin.ch/opc/de/classified-compilation/19780252/202002180000/747.201.1.pdf
* http://schifffahrt.bav-faq.ch/5?lang=de

> Conclusion: Having a boat is a complex matter and shouldnt be underestimatet. To have a boat in switzerland is always paired with the need of a «driving-licence» for boats. The waiting-time for a landing-place is also pretty high. Boat-owners need to be in a club, most of the time, to even get one. **This means that the boat-sharing-app needs to be easy to use, but can be complex in the type of information that is displayed, because the user has to be educated in the use of a boat anyway.**

#### Information: I'm now 30 minutes into the research process and have an understanding about the existing boat-sharing market. I now know what it takes to have a boat in switzerland and the ups and downs of having one. I now have enough insight to dive into the needs of my user.

## Mindmap

Now that I know what a boat is and what aspects of «using a boat» there are, I should be able to arrange my thougths into a mindmap.


This mindmap is pretty barebones. I only wanted to spend 10 minutes on it, and nothing more. Time-Management is important to get things done in such a short timeframe!

## Challenge
How can we help a group of friends manage all aspect of their boatclub efficiently and easily?

## Interview
> Realisation: I wanted to have an overview about a boat and its user. Thats why I did the Internet-Research part. Unfortunately I didnt get enough insight into *what it means* to have a boat. So, to not make assumptions, I need to do Interviews with boat-owners and sharers…
>
The next part is about learning even more. I need to know what a boat-users needs are. What is important in owning a boat? To make informed decisions I decided to do some interviews to give me the insights I need.

Questions like these could likely be answered by the client, but in this assignment I dont have one. So I need to get the answers to these questions from the users directly.

**Interview Goal: Whats important for a boat owner around having a boat to share the load of owning one?**

---

### Questions and Answers
#### User 1
**What type of boat do you use?**
*SouthWind SD 2200 with Yamaha 150 outboard engine*

**Are documents/training required to drive this boat? If so, which ones?**
*Since we have the boat in Florida and only drive there, no additional testing is necessary. I can get in and drive. However, for those born after January 1988, an online boat exam is necessary.*

**How are the costs for your boat composed?** (So i know what might needs to be displayed)
*Purchase price, insurance, maintenance and petrol.*

**What is regular work that you have to do on a boat?** (What Options does the UI need)
*Regular movement of the boat and outside cleaning; a good insurance; while driving the boat does not behave like a vehicle, so practice!*

**When will you know that your boat needs service?** (How notifications need to be implemented)
*If our captain (he manages the boat in our absence) notices something. Approx. every 2 months he has to move it to avoid any damage. If he then notices that something is not running smoothly, a specialist will look into it.*

**How do you plan to use the boat?** (what information needs to be displayed to make that decission)
*The boat is at our disposal only. When we are in Florida (about 3-4 times a year) we use the boat. Otherwise our captain moves it every 2 months.*

**How many times a year do you use your boat approximately?** (Does the App need a calendar and how does it need to look like)
*8 times - depending on the length of our stay in Florida and weather conditions.*

**For how long?** (how a calendar needs to be built)
*About 5 hours each time. Go out to the sea, take a target and back again.*

**If you would share your boat with someone, how would the costs be handled?** (how the billing needs to work)
*All costs are documented and divided by the parties => equal.*

---

#### User 2
**What type of boat do you use?**
*Stingray motor boat, Blu26 sailboat*

**Are documents/training required to drive this boat? If so, which ones?**
*Yes, motor boat licence A, sailing licence category D*

**How are the costs for your boat composed?** (So i know what might needs to be displayed)
*Acquisition, operation, insurance and maintenance*

**What is regular work that you have to do on a boat?** (What Options does the UI need)
*Motor boat: ventilation of the engine compartment, engine temperature, manoeuvring, rules of priority.
Sailing boat: (Must be more than one person on board) steering the boat, setting sails, manoeuvring, rules of precedence*

**When will you know that your boat needs service?** (How notifications need to be implemented)
*Service interval according to engine (I don't know about ours) / underbody revision every 2-3 years (I'm not sure about this interval...) Or of course if something is defective. Most things become visible at the beginning and end of the season when the boat is taken out of the water.*

**How do you plan to use the boat?** (what information needs to be displayed to make that decission)
*We share: Motorboat is divided into even / odd days (ask for exceptions via Whatsapp) / Sailboat via Whatsapp*

**How many times a year do you use your boat approximately?** (Does the App need a calendar and how does it need to look like)
*May–October, about 2-3 times a month*

**For how long?** (how a calendar needs to be built)
*About 1–5 hours.*

**If you would share your boat with someone, how would the costs be handled?** (how the billing needs to work)
*Everything by 2 and petrol based on fairness*

---
>Conclusion: I did more then these 2 Interviews, but they we're actually quite similar, all of them. The learnings I got out of them go straigth into the Value Proposition Canvas.

---

## Value Proposition Canvas
Normally one would do a Value Proposition Canvas for each Interview and each Persona that comes out of it. For this project I wont do that. The reasoning behind is the pretty small scope and also the small amount of Interviews that got done in the timeframe.


### Scenario
*Out of all my insights I gained I can now make informed decisions about the usage of the app and the needs of my users. The scenario is as follows:*

Mel, Liv, Paul and Hugo are 4 friends living near a lake. They all are friends since they are little and have their birthday around the same time. For their 30th birthday, they buy a boat together and are focussed on using it together and individually, sharing the cost.

Here comes ARGONAUT into the picture. Thanks to ARGONAUT they are able to set up the boat in the app. In the setup they can generate Check-Up lists for the maintenance after a boat trip, have insights into costs and also document the usage they all have, so the costs of the boat get split evenly.

Liv uses it this summer the most – they can see that in the app. So its clear, that Hugo has to pay most of the cost, as proposed in the app. The payment runs outside of the app – the service providers are just too diverse to manage the payment in the app.

In the app they are able to «book» trips and so make a reservation, if they want to go individually. Arguing about it isn't part of ARGONAUT functions – there is no chat, but they have full oversight when the boat gets used, who used it and for how long. They also see if its in service, as this timeframe can also be «blocked». For service or maintenance thats out of the normal cycle, damages can also be reported by single users, so maintenance can be organized.

ARGONAUT is a tool to organize the use of the boat and everything around it.

User story
---


Lo-Fi
---

Figma-File Link: https://www.figma.com/file/noNnwxFNVpaj9ZNJLMkJkZ/Assignment-ARGONAUT?node-id=10%3A37

Figma-Prototype Link: https://www.figma.com/proto/noNnwxFNVpaj9ZNJLMkJkZ/Assignment-ARGONAUT?node-id=10%3A38&viewport=408%2C511%2C1.0984416007995605&scaling=scale-down

Design Decisions
---
I wanted to do as few screens as possible to get a good overview. I wasnt able to do the lo-fi for all the screens, but here are those that I was able to do:

### Start

The Startpage shows the picture and the name of the boat, so everyone knows which boat is meant.

As a little overview I show the user the next Events he created and might want to attend. Also, so that everyone is on the same page, every user in the «team» sees what was reported the last time, so everyone knows if something is broken.

For the navigation I wanted to do something really simple and used a standard pattern for mobile-apps.

### Calendar
The Events are color-coded to better distinguish them from one another. One has to see «which events are mine» on the first glance. The User is always blue, maintenance always red and other users a range of different colors.

The design patterns used are as simple as possible. The calendar works as the inbuilt ones from iOS and Android and also the «add» functionality is a standard design-pattern.

### Admin
I'm not really fond of the wording, but the «Admin» page has everything from Analytics to Reporting in a simple overview.

### Analytics
The Analytics page shows an overview of the usage. The options panel top right is meant to tailor the Analytics to the users needs. The user can look up the usage times, decide the timeframe and also switch from «time» to «cost» in the options-panel, so the app doesnt get cluttered.
Unfortunately I wasnt able to conduct a user-test to see if that functionality hidden in the options-panel works.

### Reports
The reports panel shows the reports that have been made. The reports here are not done yet and are in the «backlog» for the boat.
The detailed report shows a picture. The user can add one to a report and write a little text to set the picture into context. The only thing thats missing here is a button to set it as «done».

User flows
---

Times up sadly!

## Questions after assignment

### What challenges did you identify as you completed the assignment?
I was glad I did a lot of planning in the first few minutes of the assignment. But time was always a problem. Also a problem was, that I didnt know ANYTHING about boats, so I needed to conduct a lot of Interviews an research to even get close to «understand» the user. Most of the time went into that. After I knew that, I had like 30 minutes left for some kind of lo-fi-prototype... and it shows.
Another challenger was my workflow. At some point, while doing the Value Proposition Canvas, I thougth «maybe just skip this step»... but I didnt. In the end I'm glad I didn't, because it helped me focus on the core-mechanics of the app.
The last struggle was coming in contact with boat-owners. I had to ask around quite a bit – and a questionaire per E-Mail (because of our current pandemic), wasn't really satisfying. Not for the User and not for me. In the end I was also bummed out that I couldn't test my first draft.

### If you had an additional day to work on this, what would you improve?
* I did the User-Flows on the fly and while doing the lo-fi Prototype to get the Prototype done in some capacity. I would go back and get the Navigation nice and orderly.
* After that would be the completion of the lo-fi Prototype.
* Directly after I would conduct some simple user-tests to see if the navigation of the app and the functionality is easily understandable.
* After that I might be able to simplify some steps in the app and streamline some of the User-Flows.
* I need to show the onboarding-process. How is an Account registered? How does a group get made? How is a boat registered? That would be my next step after the core-funtionality.

### If you started from scratch now, what would you do differently?
I think the planning and the research-part was quite solid, but after that I was quite low on time.
To solve this problem I would do some less Internet-Research and go to the User sooner for Interviews. After that I would do the flows and then some paper-prototypes, to plan the lo-fi Prototype better.
What I was also not able to do, was to show the full on-board process in the app. I wasn't able to show how the group creates accounts and how a boat is registered. I was only able to show the core-functionality.