About VoltSafe
The specific product that I worked on, VoltSafe Marine, is an all-in-one solution that pairs a smart, marine-grade power pedestal (post with outlets to supply electricity) with a connected marina management software—giving marina managers a single platform to manage power usage, metering, reservations, and customer billing.
Here's how VoltSafe Marine works in the real world: our specially designed smart power pedestals—grey ones in the photo—will replace traditional ones (imagine a large outdoor version of your home power outlet).
They connect directly to our marina management app that I mentioned, and giving managers one place to manage power, reservations, and billing.
Overview
This case study walks through how I led the product design efforts to evolve our app from a Beta into a customer-ready release over 10 months.
⚠️ Note: Due to NDA, I can't show the full design. We have direct competitors actively looking to learn what features we offer.
Beta
Launch
Team
1 Lead Product Designer (me)
2 Full-stack Developers
4 Hardware Engineers
CTO
Timeline
10 months
My Role
Product Strategy
User Research
Competitor Analysis
Design System
UI/UX Design
The Challenge
When I joined in June 2024, the goal was clear: get the software ready for launch by the time our hardware ships in summer 2025.
But like many startups, things were a little scrappy. I didn't get a proper onboarding, and the release plan was little more than a rough list of features—no flows, wireframes, or roadmap. And more importantly, we had no plans for how we'd work together, and no clear role for design to get us there.
Establishing My Role To Shape The Product
At first, the team would ask me for UI mockups according to how they envisioned things. While I was happy to contribute, I knew design (and I) could offer more. This wasn't just about pushing pixels, it was about SHAPING the product.
📍 So I stepped up to lead by:
Clearly communicating what design (and I) could bring to the table
Embedding design into product strategy and roadmapping
Establishing clear collaboration processes with engineering and leadership
And then I said, "Here, let me show you," and kicked off a deep dive into product discovery.
Product Discovery
On top of learning our tech stack and our team dynamics, I ran several discovery activities to understand where our product stood in terms of design and market fit.
User research
Customer journey mapping
UX audit
Competitive analysis
User Research
I spoke with a few marina managers, boat owners, and my co-workers who have interacted directly with them. We have a primary and secondary user group.
Primary: Marina owners & managers
30-40+ years old (managers are typically younger than owners)
Responsible for purchasing and operating the power pedestals and software.
Secondary: Boaters
50+ years old
Own small boats and yachts (personal)
Either use the boats during nice seasons or live on their boats
Often DIYers who install and modify equipment/appliances
Use the pedestals to power their boats when parked
They share some important traits:
Not tech-savvy
Resistent to change
Customer Journey
Building on what I learned from user research, I mapped out the customer journey to better understand key touch points with our product, and how we solve their problems.
⚠️ Note: Due to NDA, I'm showing a simplified version.
The flowchart maps out the marina manager journey (blue) and boater journey (green). It also highlights key touch points with our products, and how their experiences connect.
UX Audit
Once I understood our users, I turned inward to assess the state of the Beta app in terms of UX. The audit surfaced several key issues:
Cluttered screens – Too much information packed into each view, making it hard to focus
Weak hierarchy – No clear structure to guide attention or prioritize actions
Incomplete features – Core features were underdeveloped or missing use cases
Weak visual inconsistency & design system – A mix of design patterns and components from various libraries led to lack of cohesion
Lack of design-to-dev process – No feature requirements, design documentation, or handoff guidelines
Competitive Analysis
Then, to gauge where we stood in the market, I analyzed leading marina managements softwares and found that:
Feature sets are similar – Most focus on booking, billing, and surrounding features
Weak design – Most tools feel outdated, clunky, or overly complex.
No dominant player exists yet – Only a small percentage of marinas currently use an all-in-one marina management system.
⚠️ Note: I didn’t analyze competitors in the smart pedestal space because we are the only company offering them.
Product Assessment & Strategy
🎯 Based on everything I've learned, I defined a focused strategy to guide us forward
Win on usability – Since most competitors feel clunky, we could stand out by being easy to learn and use.
Clean, modern visuals – A polished UI builds trust, especially when competitors look outdated.
Make onboarding seamless – Purchasing our product is a big investment. Adoption needs to feel effortless.
Highlight our unique value – We needed to clearly communicate the safety and efficiency benefits of our integrated system.
Product Roadmap
🗺️ Using the strategy as the foundation, I devised a roadmap to get us launch-ready.
1. Adopt a design system
This would help us:
Greatly speed up design and development
Maintain visual and interaction consistency
2. Focus on high-impact features
We focused on features most critical to user adoption and business value:
Build the billing flow
Improve outlet management
Refine reservations
3. Divide & Conquer
We needed to continuously ship value with our features, while improving information architecture and visual design. So I introduced a scalable approach:
Every time I worked on a feature, I would apply the new design system, improve the UX, and refine the IA—just for that feature and any related parts.
This allowed us to:
Avoid unnecessary rework
Maintain momentum
4. Stay flexible
Startups are unpredictable. We built in room for last-minute priorities—from bug fixes to investor demos.
This roadmap gave us a strong direction and timeline.
Impact
We launched successfully in time for our first purchase order from Wigwam Marina—a major milestone and the goal we set out to hit!
But the impact went beyond shipping features. I helped reshape how design functioned across the company:
✅ Adopted & scaled our design system to speed up both design and development
✅ Built thorough design documentation
Mockups
Flows
Iterations
Rationale
Feedback
✅ Improved collaboration with devs through:
Product requirement docs
Weekly design reviews
Organized handoffs
Post-implementation UX testing
✅ Created a design onboarding guide that covers:
Product knowledge
File structures
Collaboration workflows
Project context
Key Learnings
🗺️ Using the strategy as the foundation, I devised a roadmap to get us launch-ready.
1. Design is leadership, not just execution
We shape how the product is built, how teams work together, and how priorities are set. We are a strategic partner.
2. Product discovery is critical—even under time pressure
Because I took the time to understand the users, market, and internal processes, it gave us a clearer direction, priorities, and ultimately better results in a more timely manner.
3. Design process doesn’t have to be heavy to be effective
Every team and company is different. I was able to find a light-weight process for us that balanced speed and quality. It all comes down to understanding your teams and company needs.
4. Foundational work scales.
The systems I built—design systems, documentation, onboarding, and dev collaboration—started as ways to help us work more effectively. But looking back, I realize these investments will continue to pay off, even after I've left.