Personal Project · UX Case Study · Figma Practice

Ocean sports fans juggle five channels just to find a package, book gear, and see who else is going.

Click-through of the Figma prototype — explore, book, and community screens

Discovery happens over phone calls and emailed PDFs, rentals carry no trust signal, and there's nowhere for the community around the sport to actually live. I designed Boards & Paddles end-to-end — interviews, journey mapping, personas, and low-fi wireframes through a working high-fidelity Figma prototype — to explore how a themed, community-first app turns a fragmented hobby into an inviting one.

Personal project · Figma practice, created Jan 2022 — a concept exploration, not a shipped product.

Who Ocean sports enthusiasts From curious first-timers to the local guides who host events.

What One app, not five channels Discovery, booking, gear rental, and community in a single themed flow.

Why The trip starts online Friction in discovery and booking is friction that keeps the trip from happening at all.

Problems

Discovery scattered across calls & email
No visual way to compare packages
No trust signal on gear rentals
No home for the community
Booking buried in back-and-forth

What today looks like

Call, then wait for an email

Sue calls the watersports company, then waits on an emailed PDF just to compare packages — a full back-and-forth before she even knows what's available.

No gear confidence, no group

Reviews, trainers, and safety guidelines live nowhere a first-timer can browse before committing to a class or a rental.

What I designed

Curated packages, not a phone treeExplore Packages, Watersports, and Rentals become one themed home screen instead of a call-and-wait cycle.
Verified gear rentalsRental and class listings carry ratings and reviews up front, so a first-timer can commit with confidence.
See who's going todayA live status feed — "I'm surfing today" — lets people heading out the same day find each other.
Community built into the core navCommunity sits alongside Explore and Home — a shared feed for group photos and stories, not bolted on.
Every booking tracked in one placeMy Activities shows ongoing and completed classes at a glance, instead of scattered emails.
Booking end-to-endDates, guests, package, and payment in one flow — no back-and-forth to confirm a spot.

Boards & Paddles — themed home screen with Explore Packages, Watersports, Rentals, Souvenir, and Community — The themed home screen and the live status feed — discover a package, then see who else is heading out today. Click to view full screen.

Boards & Paddles — home feed showing a live "I'm surfing today" status — The themed home screen and the live status feed — discover a package, then see who else is heading out today. Click to view full screen.

What it explored

Personas mapped

first-timer to local guide

Journey stages

Call → Attend, does/thinks/feels/needs

Hi-fi screens shipped to Figma

explore, activities, profile, community & booking

Wireframes for the listing-detail and booking flow progressed straight into high-fidelity Figma UI
The journey map's emotion curve was used to prioritize which screens needed the most friction designed out first

Project artifacts