Voltari
challenge
Voltari came to us with a vision. We want to make the Tesla of the water.
Role: Product Design Lead
Tools: Figma, After Effects, Photoshop, Garmin
background
The founders of Voltari fortunately had extensive boating experience and a successful boat company that was already thriving. They also recently acquired an electric propulsion company that could power trains and other commercial applications. They had a recipe for success. Use the existing light weight carbon fiber performance hulls of their current boats, and add the newly acquired electric propulsion. Thier goal was to create the fastest electic boat ever made.
The ground work was layed for an excellent performance boat. But, they needed the software and the digital interfaces that would appeal to the mass market.
Research
Who was their target market? Wealthy people. These boats would cost in excess of $350k and would have to appeal to the market segment that liked Lamborghini and other unapologetically extreme luxuries. These were performance boats after all. We did a series of interviews with potential buyers to understand thier needs and wants on the water. The result we’re some great conversations and qualitative research. We identified key interactions and the functional requirements that would operate the boat.
Hardware
This wasn’t like responsive design for a determined set of mobile and desktop devices. We needed to figure out how many screens, the size of screens and the orientation of the screens, and how they’d fit into the physical design of the console and boat overall. We knew we’d have two seats at the helm. One for the helms-person, and the other for passengers. This led us to conclude that we’d want two displays oriented towards the dual seating positions
Software
We considered a series of different software solutions that would not only give us the functionality we needed on the screen, but easily interface with all of the existing boat hardware 😳 This was not an easy task. There are already well established players in the industry that have dedicated years and countless resources creating MFDs (multi-functional display) that integrate into thier existing ecosystems. Companies like RayMarine, Simrad, Lowrance and Garmin.
Fortunately, our clients are boat people. And they established great relationships with the people at Garmin. All we needed to figure out was how to customize thier existing software. We established a relationship with thier developers and refined the technicial contraints and posibilities.
Design
While all the above was being considered, we were busy designing for the end users. We had a blast conceptualizing what would be the ultimate experience on the water to compliment the boat.
Sensory
One of the biggest differciators of this boat is the insane preformance. The speed at which this boat can travel has been traditionally reserved for only the loadest, most obnoxious boats on the water. This boat would be near silent.
CLIENT testimonial
“SnapPea took the time to truly understand the industry and our unique target market. They helped us create an unforgettable experience for boaters and passengers, both on and off the boat, by focusing on user wants and needs, while also exploring ways to bring Voltari’s ambitious vision to life.
Building a first of its kind electric boat required our partners to be flexible and adapt to our changing needs. They understood the unique challenges of pulling together all the different systems and controllers to create a simple to use and custom interface that users would expect on a premium product.
SnapPea’s flexibility to adapt to our evolving needs and show the care and desire to do the right thing for our company was outstanding.
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