Boardcast

Never missing out on a perfect surfing session

Overview
Since surfing is a weather-dependent sport, surfers who do not live by the beach need to rely on forecasts and weather reporting tools to plan their sessions. Even though these tools are fairly reliable, conditions can change very quickly and without notice. As a result, constant monitoring of conditions is important prior to a session.
My Contribution
I worked and collaborated with two mentors in this project. The research, interviews, wireframes, prototypes, iterations were done by myself after our intensive weekly brainstorming, and with their trust.
         Duration
          Summer 2020, 10 weeks
         Tools
          Figma, Photoshop, Open peeps, Zoom
         Team
          Nicholas Phillips, Sergio Marquina
01. vision
Where I bring my value

The team already had some design ideas and a path to pursuit before I started. Based on the existing problem findings, the team envisioned the final solution to be an IoT product with the function of alerting surfers to stop them from missing a promising surf session. And I joined to help build the user experience and the interfaces within the device and the app.

In an ideal case, surfers will no longer need to check the surfing conditions on their forecast apps. Instead, after they set their ideal surfing conditions in the Boardcast app, with the connected service provided by a professional forecasting platform like NOAA, Boardcast will notify the surfers whenever the surfing conditions meet their thresholds. 
02. research
What are the viewing
habits surfers have?

As a human-centered designer, it’s needless to say that understanding the surfers is critical in the design process. I didn’t have presumptions in this field because I don’t have any experience in surfing, which serves as a double-edged sword; it took me more time to get to know the basic knowledge and language, and conduct the secondary and competitive research. But when I talked to users and understood the reason they preferred onshore winds before they explained, I know that efforts pay off.

Then it came to the time to speak to real surfers. I talked to 4 users in this round and some patterns surfaced.
  • Surfers have their favorite spots. Once they get familiar with the spots, the less information they will need.
  • Surfing sessions are planned ahead of times and surfers will check the forecast multiple times before actually conducting.
  • Surfers all have experienced that the actual surfing conditions do not match their expectations.
03. sketch
       & testing
Validate concepts
I sketched some wireframes based on the findings and started the second round of interviews to validate if the concepts meet the surfers need.
I interviewed with another 4 users and I found that:
  • Only show the information that matters the most (Swell height, wind direction, tide height)
    Surfers like the neat look but they still want to check and evaluate the conditions by themselves if they surf at a new spot.
  • Alleviate the burden of constant checking
    They thought the "Tracking" idea would help because they only surf when the surfing conditions align with their free time.
  • Let the app remember surfers’ preferences so surfers don’t need to remember what works and what doesn’t
    They love the "Ranking" idea, which will help them evaluate their sessions and make better decisions next time.
04. design
Reasons behind decisions

I studied at least 10 apps in this field, not only surfing apps, but also forecast apps and tide alert apps to see what I can learn from and what I should avoid. After that, I dove to design those validated concepts.

The onboarding process
Users were guided through the customizing process and were given suggested setting based on their surfing expertise.
View the flow and prototypes
Tracking‍
Surfers can either track a time slot that they are willing to conduct a surfing session and get alerted when the conditions meet their thresholds, or they can track a time when a promising session is coming and they can get quick access to the tracked session to keep an eye on how the surfing conditions change. No more constant checking. 
Track a time
Quick access to tracked sessions
View the flow and prototypes
Ranking sessions afterwards
Surfers mentioned that forecasts are not trustworthy sometimes.The interesting thing is, the forecast didn't convey the wrong information, but the conditions are more complicated than what the surfers think they might be. So we want to help surfers remember the conditions that work.
View the flow and prototypes
If they are satisfied with that conditions, they can get alert when similar conditions occur. With this AI incorporated concept, Boardcast would be more desirable increasingly. Besides, the collective data from the others at a specific spot would be super helpful for travel surfers as well.
05. device design

Device screen has a smaller boundary than phone screen. And "what the app can do, the device can do too" was the task I was given.
I started by talking with surfers to prioritize the information. The questions I wanted to answer through the semi-structured interviews were:
  • What are some of the viewing habits the surfers have?
  • What is the priority of the condition information when surfers are viewing a surfing forecast?
First version of design
I had little knowledge of device design, and we were also unable to conduct more user testing at that time. So my approach was simply researching and analyzing how the other IoT products were designed. Besides, countless brainstorm sessions with the team helped me polish and improve the design.
06. user scenarios

To better convey the user scenarios, let' meet Kelly at the end!
07. takeaways

01. Designing a dashboard for a smart device was something totally new to me. What information to display? How to display it? Should the screen be tangible? These are all the questions that need to be considered when designing. Further, designing the cohesive interactions within both device and app is not an easy task. I have learned to keep brainstorming, engaging with the users and don’t be afraid to redo and redo again.
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‍02. ​Don’t design in a vacuum. I always attempted to design wildly with innovative ideas and ambitions until I talked with a senior UX designer, Jeremy Abrams. Then I realized that some of the features might be hard and time-consuming for the developers to build. You need to take the other departments’ work into consideration while designing.

03. Accessibility hasn't had enough attention in my previous projects. I learned how to leverage the tools in Figma to test my designs to see if they were friendly to people with disabilities or color blindness.
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