PART ONE

Project Overview

PROJECT OVERVIEW

The Mission

The Global Yacht Charter Availability Calendar is a centralised platform connecting charter brokers and central agents through real-time yacht availability, verified listings, and direct inquiries. We’re on a mission to simplify and elevate the yacht charter process—especially across the Middle East and Asia—by offering seamless access to the region’s largest fleet.

Calendars gives retail brokers instant visibility into live CA-managed calendars, ensures listing accuracy through a thorough verification process, and enables effortless communication between brokers and central agents.

Company

Ankor Software

Role 

Product Design Lead

Key Responsibilities

  • Own end-to-end release to Open Beta
  • Conduct user research with Customer Success and customer focus group
  • Drive ideation with product team and final wireframing development
  • High fidelity design generation and development documentation
  • Design Quality assurance and testing with Beta customer group
  • Deliver roadmap to General Availability
PROJECT OVERVIEW

The opportunity

There’s a clear opportunity to build a modern, easy-to-use marketplace that connects agents and brokers, provides reliable real-time information, and makes the charter process smoother for everyone.

The superyacht charter industry needs a more accessible and user-friendly platform for central agents and charter brokers to work together. Current solutions are expensive, hard to use, and often feel exclusive—making it difficult for many brokers to gain access. They’re also slow, with outdated interfaces and inaccurate content, which leads to frustration and wasted time.

User Sentiment

01 Poor UX - Current platforms are outdated and difficult to use
02 Unreliable Data - resulting in disapointed customers
03 Current Expiring brochures - brochures automatically expire and disappear after a set period.

Business Impact

01 Current Massive potential for revenue generation with untapped servicable market.
02 Market Influence - as those that control the Yacht data control the market.
03 Data can feed other Ankor products - making the offerings more desirable.
PROJECT OVERVIEW

The Impact

Calendars is now the largest luxury Yacht marketplace in the Asia Pacific area AND is the main revenue driver for our product suite.

Project Impact

The platform now hosts a whopping 8000+ yachts all with verified Central agents. 

70% of users reporting as promoters for the platform.

Calendars now the largest luxury yacht database in Asia Pacific. 

300+ Active Charter Broker Users

200+ Active Central Agent Users

Organisational Influence

Now the largest generator of revenue for the company. 

Is driving sales through bundling for our other product suites

Feeding content for our other products leading to more sales. 

PROJECT OVERVIEW

Design Process

I approached this design challenge with two different types of thinking:

  • Divergent: keeping an open mind
  • Convergent: narrowing down to the best idea

PART TWO

Discover

DISCOVER

User Personas

There are four key user groups for the application by interviewing a set of industry experts and customer support people across a variety of fields to understand the problem and build confidence in our direction.

Diagram depicting the relationship between a Charterer, a Charter Broker, a Central Agent and a Boat owner.

PROJECT OVERVIEW

How does the elusive world of Luxury yachting actually work?

When a guest or VIP—known as a charterer—wants to book a yacht trip, they typically reach out to a charter broker with their preferences and desired dates.

The charter broker then searches for suitable yachts and presents a selection to the charterer. Once the charterer selects a yacht, the broker contacts the central agent responsible for managing that particular vessel.

The central agent, who represents the yacht owner, handles the confirmation and coordination of the booking, ensuring all details are managed smoothly on behalf of the owner.

PROJECT OVERVIEW

Key Insights

All design decisions were based on real quantitative and qualitative user data.

{

The Central agents are really slow getting back to me when I enquire on [REDACTED], especially when I have never worked with them before. 

Charter Broker

{

It’s really important to double-check all the yacht details before showing anything to a client. Even something small, like a missing jet ski or promised feature, can seriously affect their trip. These are high-end bookings, and people expect everything to be exactly as described.

Charter Broker

{

Boat owners put alot of trust in us to bring in revenue and keep their vessels well maintained, so the work can be stressful at times. There isn’t a clear way for me to manage my yachts calendar and keep the various platforms up to date. Maintaining the yacht calendar is about 40% of my job. 

Central agent

PART THREE

Discover

PART FOUR

Define

DELIVERY

Wireframes

DELIVER

Search & Filtering

Users can search by keyword or destination, then apply filters like yacht type, size, price, and availability to narrow results. They can browse detailed yacht profiles with images, features, and live availability.

DELIVER

Profile View & Enquiry

Users can click on any yacht to open its full profile, where they can view images, specifications, features, and live availability, then submit an enquiry directly to the Central Agent through a built-in contact form.

PART FIVE

Deliver

DELIVER

Design and Prototyping

Figma files were created for the developer handover and served as the working reference for the engineering team.

View the figma file

DELIVER

Brochure generation

I tested the prototype with a group of industry professionals, assessing how well they could navigate it, complete key tasks, and identifying areas that needed adjustments based on their feedback.

DELIVER

The Noticeboard

I tested the prototype with a group of industry professionals, assessing how well they could navigate it, complete key tasks, and identifying areas that needed adjustments based on their feedback.

DELIVER

API Integration

I tested the prototype with a group of industry professionals, assessing how well they could navigate it, complete key tasks, and identifying areas that needed adjustments based on their feedback.

DELIVER

Coming soon: MMK Calendar Integration

The MMK feature, currently in development, is designed to integrate with Central Agents’ Google or Outlook calendars. Testing will begin once it’s released for Beta trials.

View Figma prototype

DELIVER

Product Demo

Watch me give a quick overview of the Calendars application. 

DELIVER

Help Center & Knowledge base 

I developed a onboarding curriculum with articles, demos and walkthrough. More videos in the works.

View Help Center 

PART SIX

Next Steps

NEXT STEPS

Road to the largest Yacht Marketplace in the world

After the successful launch of Calendars, the team and I planned the next phase of development to grow the platform into the world’s leading luxury yacht marketplace.

Monitor help centre

Monitor help centre searches to improve content, address user pain points, and guide feature enhancements.

Drive user onboarding and adoption

Drive adoption through educational workshops, champions program, and incentives.

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Monitor feedback

Provide feedback channels and actively review user critique about the app. Conduct more usability testing if necessary.

Measure Impact

Evaluate key metrics such as increased enquiries rates, yacht profile views, and brochure generations.

Build Video Content

Build video content that work in tandem with the help centre articles.

Drive feature request roadmap

Continue building, testing and refining feature roadmap and workflows within the app.

NEXT STEPS

Reflection

As Product Design lead for this application in the product team at Ankor Software, I drove the end-to-end release to Open Beta and further cusotmer rollout.

WENT WELL

Formative user research was executed early and captured key insights from design leadership

Component flexibility is built into the grid system, allowing it to be scalable without losing integrity

Comprehensive documentation helped designers and developers apply the system effectively

TO IMPROVE

Mobile responsiveness  was not prioritised for the launch of the project and meant users had a bad experience viewing the app on their mobiles.

More prototype testing time might have improved the overal design although users have reported no issues so far. 

Brochure design helped designers and developers apply the system effectively

NEXT STEPS

Testimonials

{

We have some incredible momentum – this is the best period at Ankor since we have started … we have to buckle down and take this momentum and kick arse … let’s go people.

Mike CEO

{

This is getting crazy! More inbounds from referrals from brokers in Monaco….. they are spreading the word. I just got a call from [REDACTED], and he signed up for Trips, I demoed Calendars and he asked for a bundle to finalise the deal.

Andy – Customer Success

{

Working with ANKOR has been an absolute pleasure. We love their modern, user-friendly interface—it’s refreshing to use a platform that feels current and easy to navigate… It’s been amazing to witness ANKOR’s growth and their dedication to filling a vital gap in the market by providing accessible, valuable resources to so many yachting professionals. We have signed up to their Itineraries, Retail and Central Agency (CA) services. ANKOR has become an essential part of our operations, and we couldn’t recommend them more highly! 

Charter Broker – Mortlock Yachts