Product Design · UX/UI · Marketplace · Mobile
BoatHelper: a marketplace for boat maintenance
Boat owners need work done and have no idea what it should cost. Marine craftsmen need work and have no shopfront. BoatHelper is a mobile app that puts both sides on the same task.
- Role
- Product Designer
- Tools
- Figma
- Platform
- iOS & Android
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01 — Overview
Two audiences, one object: the task
An owner posts a job against a specific boat — engine, painting, varnishing, electrical. Craftsmen in range see it, send offers, and one is accepted into an agreement. Work runs, messages stay attached to the job, the task closes.
Scope: owner home, boat profiles, task creation, task and offer listings, craftsman and owner profiles, agreements, chat for both sides, and market pricing.
Designed for
Representative user profile
Diane, 51
Boat owner, weekend sailor
Goal — get a fair quote for engine work without calling five marinas.
Frustration — no visibility into who is qualified or what a job like hers should cost.
Representative user profile
Reuben, 38
Marine maintenance craftsman
Goal — fill slow weeks with nearby jobs he can quote with confidence.
Frustration — no shopfront — work comes from word of mouth alone.
02 — Challenge
Nobody trusts a price they cannot compare
Price opacity
Quotes for the same hull job can differ by hundreds. Owners had no reference point before posting.
Vague briefs
A one-line request produces guesswork offers, which forces a second round of messages.
Two-sided empty state
Craftsmen leave without tasks; owners leave without offers. Both sides need to feel activity on day one.
Commitment
Accepting an offer is a money decision made on a phone. It needs a moment of its own, not a button in a list.
03 — Structure
Status is the spine of the whole product
Boat
Type, length, year — added once, reused forever
Task
Category, description, photos, location
Offers
Price, timeline, craftsman rating side by side
Agreement
Scope, price and dates confirmed by both
Done
Completion, review, history on the boat
Before
Posting blind and hoping a fair number comes back
After
Market averages shown before the task is written
Before
Offers arriving as separate messages
After
One comparable list, then one deliberate acceptance
04 — Design decisions
Three decisions carried most of the product
01 — Market data on the home screen
Active task count, average task price and a six-month price trend by category sit above the fold for owners. It sets expectations before anyone types a number, and it proves the market is alive to a craftsman deciding whether to stay.
02 — Category before description
Task creation asks for the category first, then shapes the prompts and photo guidance around it. An engine job and a varnishing job need different evidence, and asking for it up front removes a round trip.
03 — The agreement is a screen
Accepting an offer opens a page that restates scope, price and dates and needs confirmation from both sides. Everything after it — chat, progress, completion — hangs off that record.
05 — System
A small component set doing a lot of work
Product palette
Typography
Nunito Sans
24 / 18 / 16 / 14 / 12 / 10 — six sizes, three weights.
Rounded, high x-height, legible in sunlight on a dock.
Status & category
Status is a shared token, so a task reads the same in a list, a card and a notification.
Component set
- Task snippet — 7 variants
- Category chip — 5 variants
- Status badge — 4 variants
- Boat snippet, offer card, profile header
- Chat bubble, tab bar, icon set
06 — Outcome & learnings
A marketplace is judged on completed jobs
More tasks got a first offer instead of sitting open with no response.
Owners heard back faster once market pricing set clear expectations.
More agreements closed instead of stalling after the quote stage.
What worked
Putting market pricing on the home screen changed the tone of the whole app. Owners stopped treating offers as a negotiation trap and started treating them as a comparison.
What I would change
The craftsman side deserves its own dashboard rather than a mirror of the owner's. Their day is about pipeline and travel radius, not boats.