The Opportunity

The existing platform, Trips, was designed to enable brokers and agents to generate client-facing brochures by leveraging the Le Cart itinerary database and a library of yachts. While the platform offered useful functionality, it struggled to fully meet user expectations. Feedback indicated areas for improvement in usability and reliability, which contributed to lower renewal rates and limited customer adoption. These challenges highlighted the need for a more refined solution to better serve the industry and strengthen the company’s reputation as a provider of high-quality software.

This presented a critical opportunity: to reimagine the platform, rebuild trust with users, and transform a failing product into a tool that genuinely enhanced the client engagement process.

Ankor Software
Role: Product Design Lead

Key Responsibilities

• Foundational research to uncover main sources of pain for users
• Propose feature updates
• Collaborate and generate wireframes to be discussed with technical team
• Conduct focus group reviews with high res prototype and synthesis feedback
• Prepare project for handoff
• Deliver roadmap for further feature rollout.

Mission

Our mission was to transform Trips from an underperforming, frustrating platform into a reliable and valued tool that empowered brokers and agents to deliver exceptional client experiences. The business had suffered significantly as a result of Trips’ shortcomings—high churn rates eroded the customer base, annual renewals declined sharply, and the company’s reputation in the industry was damaged by being associated with poorly built software. This not only limited growth but also weakened long-standing client relationships.

By addressing these challenges head-on, our goal was to rebuild trust, restore credibility in the market, and create a platform that not only met but exceeded user expectations.

Core Issues addressed

01 High Churn Rate: A high churn rate was eating away at the platforms revenue stream

01 Damaged Reputation: The platform’s poor performance branded the company as a provider of low-quality software, weakening industry credibility.

01 Stalled Growth: Instead of driving adoption, Trips became a liability, limiting opportunities for expansion and reducing client acquisition.

Post Launch of Fix Impact

01 80% of users reported to be promoters of the platform after major release.

02 Restored trust and reputation for Ankor in the industry

03 Users reported they feel supported with carefully curated help information for self paced training.

03 Number of clicks to create a presentation have declined by 200% when compared with stats 6 months before launch changes.

The Impact

Trips is now back on track with high subscription rates and low churn percentages thanks to the ease-of-use odyssey.

Small ease-of-use release (pilot, 6-month window)

• Churn ↓ 20% over 6 months as onboarding and core flows were simplified.
• Active subscriptions +10 immediately post-release, then ~2× vs. baseline by month 6.
• Impact: Stabilized retention, created a healthier growth slope ahead of the major launch.

Major ease-of-use release (full rollout, next 6 months)

• Churn ~0 (“approached negligible”) following the overhaul.
• Subscriptions +600% in 6 months (≈ 7× baseline level).
• Impact: Dramatic expansion of the active base and revenue trajectory; materially improved NRR and LTV.

Design Process

Trips was a struggling platform that was turned around and is now the strongest in its niche in the boating and yachting sector. This was achieved by:

• Empathising: Understanding the users pain points
• Develop: Develop a method to improve usability
• Validate: Validate designs with rigorous testing

DISCOVER

We already knew alot about the primary user: Charter Brokers

A charter broker acts as the middle point between clients and yacht owners or operators. Their role is to understand a client’s needs—such as budget, destination, and type of experience—and then match them with the most suitable yacht or vessel. They handle the negotiation of terms, pricing, and contracts, while also coordinating with crew and owners to ensure availability and smooth logistics. Beyond booking, charter brokers provide advice, manage expectations, and oversee details so the client has a seamless and tailored charter experience.

Key Insights

• Limited User Engagement: Users rarely log in, forget key flows after onboarding.
• Insufficient Prompts: Lack of tooltips, warnings, and guidance causes frequent user errors.
• Unclear Data Saving: Confusion between saving to an itinerary versus a proposal.
• Complex Steps: Tasks feel difficult and non-intuitive, even after training.
• Limited Self-Learning: No knowledge base or walkthroughs; users rely on success team.
• Unclear Terminology: Terms like "proposal" vs. "itinerary" confuse users.
• Need for Quick Proposals: Users want fast, template-based options before customization.
• Overwhelming Flexibility: Too many choices leave users feeling confused.
• Sales/Success Knowledge Gaps: Staff unaware of many platform features.
• Distrust in data: Users felt they couldn't trust the data we supplied.
• Latency & Image Loading: Users felt the application was 'Slow' and that things took ages to load.

Read the full report here

RESEARCH

Heuristic Evaluation

01

The Dashboard

02

The itinerary Editor

03

The Proposal Editor

Image showing the current user flow: A user creates a proposal and then wants to edit their itinerary from within the proposal editor. To do this, they must leave the proposal editor, update the itinerary, and reload it into the proposal. When they return, they discover their design work has been lost because the updated itinerary overwrote their changes.

Main system issues

Back and forth: Updating routes forces users to return to the dashboard, often losing design edits.

Two editors: Separate editors for itineraries and presentations cause confusion.

Two itinerary types: Ankor-owned vs. user-owned adds more confusion.

Need for simple workflow: Users want a clear, two-way workflow to update both itinerary content and presentation design.

Lost design work: Changes made in the itinerary editor overwrite design work in the proposal editor, forcing users to redo edits.

ALT Text & Font Sizes

I reviewed the platform’s use of alt text and tested font scaling for users with vision impairments. I found that the fonts were sized in pixels instead of rem, which prevented proper scaling, and that icons and images lacked alt text descriptions. Both issues represent poor accessibility practices.

Latency issues

I reviewed the application and identified several latency issues, especially when saving presentations. Users often felt uncertain about whether their work was actually saving. I discovered that if the browser was closed before the system’s autosave completed, the work would not be saved. For users with poor internet connections, this meant they could lose significant progress without realizing it.

Focus Group with Experts & stakeholders

I facilitated a workshop with key stakeholders and experts using the SCAMPER methodology

Small Release

• Update Product Feature terminology: eg “Proposal Wizard” to “Presentation Editor” for simplicity
  
• Website payment terminal & New User Onboarding for usability
  
• Dashboard Pages & Card redesign for clarity
  
• Font Sizing for accessibility
  
• Latency & Image Loading
  

Major Release

• Integrated itinerary editing to Presentation editor for usability
• Stepper/Guided presentation builder for reassurance
• Dashboard table view for speed
• CA verified Data tags for Yachts to build trust

Outside of Scope

• Brochure redesign
• Advanced presentation editing: Requests for features such as custom fonts, additional section styles, and design controls (borders, shadows, etc.) are acknowledged but deferred to a future phase to avoid scope creep.
• Edits to Custom locations: We saw alot of usability issues when users create a location however this would have to wait as only a small minority of users need to use the feature.

Applying UX Laws

I reviewed the foundational UX laws - a series of best practices for building user interfaces. Using psychology in design helped shed light on user expectations, improving the overall user experience.

Desired Workflow

In collaboration with our technical lead, I was able to create a more ideal workflow for our users based on their goals and edge cases, moving and editing content between the itinerary and presentation editor. A bit of work was needed to untangle the different data packets.

Digital Wireframes

I created a series of wireframes to address each issue and then shared them with key stakeholders and subject matter experts to gather their feedback.

Wireframe link - Coming Soon