Panousos Boats

The problem

The business rents small boats that need no licence, on Salamina. The customers are day trippers, often first-timers, and once they are out at sea nobody is there to answer questions about where they can go or which waters to stay out of.

Give paying customers a guide they can trust on the water, and give the owner full control of what it shows without needing a developer.

The challenges

• ●The guide is used at sea on a phone, where connectivity is unreliable and nobody is going to load a web page mid-trip.
• ●Safety information cannot depend on the customer switching a layer on — it has to be visible whether or not anyone looks for it.
• ●The owner runs the business alone, so changing a point of interest or the access code cannot require a developer.
• ●Everything competes for a small screen in bright light, which turned out to mean removing features rather than adding them.

The solution

• ●An interactive chart of the island with points of interest and marked starting points, all managed by the owner from an admin panel.
• ●A permanent coastal safety band drawn 200 metres out from the shoreline, always on rather than a layer someone has to remember to enable.
• ●Customer access through an entry code the owner can change at any time, without a developer in the loop.
• ●Installable as a progressive web app, so the guide is on the phone before the boat leaves the dock.
• ●Map styles trimmed to the ones customers actually use, after the extra options proved to be noise on a small screen.