Here is a link to a prototype of the app that I built for the commercial fishing boat the Nancy Cloud in Westport, WA.  And here is the story of how it happened:

 

I was talking to my friend who works on a fishing boat, and he mentioned that they were having problems recording their catches. I thought that I could help because I had created a no-code website for my brewery Paper Street Brewing Company and worked on WSU's Master Gardener site.  This led me to doing research on no-code app developer sites and got comfortable with using Softr.io. Then I talked to the captain and his crew about their pain points. It took a little convincing, but the captain agreed to hire me to develop a website/app for him.

First, I researched what types of apps are out there and what other needs commercial fishing crews struggle with. While I was researching, I developed some user personas. I also went on a fishing trip on the Nancy Cloud to see how they work and also discovered that I get seasick very easily. After I recovered, I created story boards. Being on the boat helped with this a lot.

 

A little wireframing started to give life to the product. Because Softr.io was easy to use I skipped prototyping and made a very simple MVP. Once it was finished, I had the crew and captain do some user testing as I watched them. I was stoked that the core functionality was what they wanted.

After some tweaking and cosmetic changes, I had them use it in the field. Unfortunately, I could not be there (secretly I was excited not to get seasick again). But they gave me more feedback on how some of the buttons were laid out and I changed the layout to make it more user-friendly.

 

The app has is a buyer portal.  To get feedback on how it should perform the captain, and I went to one of Nancy Cloud's live buyers for input.  One of the criteria for the buyer's portal was that the captain only wanted the buyers to see the buyer's portal page and not be able to see the rest of the pages for security reasons.  I created user groups and each page and section of the page had specific user privileges to who can use or see them. We went through the same steps as I did with crew-facing functionality. Had a couple of iterations and landed on a very uncomplicated design. 

It is a simple website/app, but it does what the client needs: An easy way to capture data about their fishing trips and relay specific information to their buyers.