Boat Captain Selection and Transactions Made Simple
Led the product design and UX research for the 'Captain as a Service' feature at Getmyboat, designing and implementing a seamless experience that allows boat owners to add captains to their boats, while enabling renters to easily select captains for their bookings.
Company: Getmyboat
Role: Lead Product Designer
Year: Launched April 2024
Team: 1 PM, Design Systems Lead, 1 UI Designer, Engineering
Background
I led the design and UX research for a new feature built to help renters find safer, stress-free experiences on the water. This cross-functional initiative involved collaborating with engineers, content designers, and marketers to create a seamless experience across search, booking, and post-booking flows.
How might we create a smooth, intuitive way for renters to book a captain while helping boat owners onboard and manage captains efficiently?
The renter experience lacked clarity around which boats included captains, creating friction for first-time renters and limiting trust. On the owner side, there was no formal system for adding, inviting, or managing captains.
Challenge
Solution
Partnering with Product, Engineering, and Content Strategy, I designed a multi-touch solution:
Complete UX overhaul of the transactions experience
Invite-a-captain feature for boat owners
New captain onboarding flow
Captain Admin Dashboard (with UI Designer)
Optimized email flows for renters, owners, and captains (with PM)
Results
$1.7M in gross bookings through Captain Payments in first 3 months
400 captains onboarded
7,084 Captain Offers sent
620 confirmed Captain Bookings
1,730 forecasted bookings
I created an educational walkthrough video to introduce boat owners to the new 'Captain as a Service' feature. The video highlights key benefits, shows how the tool works, and reinforces the thoughtful UX and product design behind it. It was used in outreach efforts to help owners adopt the new experience with confidence.