Boat Help is a mobile platform that connects boat owners with reliable craftsmen specialising in boat maintenance and repairs. The platform is structured around a task-based workflow. Boat owners post a job without setting a budget, craftsmen browse available tasks and submit bids, clearly communicating pricing and availability.
It was a challenge designing for two different groups of users with very different goals. Boat owners need an easy way to describe a problem, compare available craftsmen, and feel confident they're choosing the right person for the job. Craftsmen, on the other hand, need an efficient way to discover new requests, submit offers, communicate with clients, and manage their ongoing work.
Because trust sits at the centre of every service marketplace, much of the design focused on making the process transparent. I explored ways to give both sides better visibility throughout the repair journey. Features such as bidding, progress tracking, messaging and reviewing all work together to create a shared understanding of what's happening at every stage.
One of the design principles I kept coming back to was making the interface feel almost invisible. I wanted it to resemble a blank sheet of paper where the focus naturally falls on the task itself. Boats are highly visual, and a few good photographs often communicate more than paragraphs of text. Because of that, images became the strongest element in the hierarchy, while the rest of the interface was designed to quietly support the information.
Working on Boat Help gave me the opportunity to think beyond individual screens and design an ecosystem where both sides benefit from the same experience. It reinforced how much product design depends on understanding relationships between users, not just their individual workflows, and how thoughtful interaction design can build trust long before two people meet in person.
