Lisa McGarthwaite: Garmin Helm Case Study

Discovery

GAIN BACK CONTROL

Garmin was diving into an already established market in the app stores. From competitive analysis, we determined that the major Garmin competitors already had an remote control app available. In addition this app would be Digital Cyclone's first venture into deep collaboration with the Garmin hardware teams.

To understand our target audience, we set out to learn our competitor's apps, relied on the information gathered about our customers from the previous BlueChart Mobile app, and set out to gain an understanding of Garmin chart plotter functionality.

Garmin Helm faced a multitude of technical challenges and interaction questions. Due to a lack of knowledge about a an average customer's boat setup, the team was unsure of how many chart plotters an average customer would need to control. Small boats may have only 1, but larger, more expensive operations could feature multiple chart plotters on multiple decks. The decision was made to plan for 8 chart plotters to comfortably view/control.

There was also the question of security while onboard. Not everyone should be able to access the boat's plotters and change settings. This concern required the chart plotter team to introduce new functionality. The app would need to support view and view/control behaviors which are set by the plotters.

Next, the customer would need to be on a specific Wi-Fi network for the app to work. This Wi-Fi network is created and maintained by the plotters.

Finally, Helm would have to support multiple types of chart plotters (touch-based and keyed). Touch-based chart plotters on mobile devices are very intuitive since mobiles are touch-based. A design challenge arises when we were tasked to support plotters that are key-based (that is, plotters that have hardware-based keys on the bezel of the unit). Mobiles don't have many/any physical keys, and we would need a way to provide the necessary keys that each plotter used (different plotters have different keys and key arrangements).

Design

SIMPLE ISN'T EASY

While seemingly a simple app compared to BlueChart Mobile, there were still many challenges to face. Although this app is a utility, we wanted to feature easy and fun interactions. Another challenge was that the app itself would have no stored content, all functionality would depend on the connected devices. So instead of content, the use cases and edge cases would become our design challenge. As in BlueChart Mobile, to keep all the team on the same page, we used collaborative design studios to flesh out the app's main structure and interactions. Paper prototypes, wireframes and mockups followed.

Flow Diagramming

One of the most obvious problems we faced was the display of the chart plotters within the app. A customer may have many different plotters that he wants to access, but it's conceivable that all/some of them would seemingly display the same chart screen. For example, if a captain has a chart plotter in the Helm and wants to move up to the Fly Bridge, both of the chart plotters could be set to Charts. If the captain or second mate elsewhere in the vessel were to access Garmin Helm, how would he know which plotter was which? We needed to devise a way to show as many of the chart plotters as we could at a time, and yet still give enough detail for our customers to easily find the one desired.

We were also given the requirement that chart plotters in a station would have to be grouped together. A station is a a customer-defined grouping of devices; usually located in the same area. Fortunately, station names come from a small, pre-defined list so we did not have to worry about adding the capability for the user to change a station name. Chart plotters in a station could come online/offline at any time, and the app would need to reflect the current state of the customer's setup.

To meet our requirements, we structured the app so that along the bottom a "film strip" would be present with all the connected chart plotters displayed. Plotters would be grouped by station and show the station title. Moving the film strip would effect which chart plotter would be shown in the large detail area above the strip. Accompanying device information would be displayed, and tapping on the detail image would bring the customer to a screen where he can control the device.

prototypes

Helm was initially designed for iOS; after it's release to the App Store we were tasked with creating another app for Android. Since this app would appear on 2 major smartphone systems, it was key to have a similar experience across platforms. As this was still the relatively early days of Android, and Android design was a bit less homogenous, we decided to do a minimal amount of alteration. The same look-n-feel was utilized, as well as the overall app structure.

Final UI

Develop

ARE YOU TALKING TO ME?

Development on this app was an interesting challenge. Instead of most of the content being present within the app, we would be relying almost exclusively on communication and data exchange from externally connected devices. Coordination between multiple groups was now critical since we were dependent to a certain degree on the chart plotter teams at Garmin for support. This endeavor was also a first for the Garmin team and required close collaboration. Specific API's and communication channels needed to be established, with both teams coordinating the effort. If you know technology, APIs are never static; as time went on we were required to support additional types of chart plotters and adjustments to the communication protocols would be needed.

Verify

ROGER THAT

As in BlueChart Mobile, we finished our development cycle with a usability test. Since this app's features and interactions were not as complicated (two main screens), we felt comfortable that a test at the end would be sufficient. Like all tests, it brought out some new challenges to face, but we had the time to try and mitigate the most critical issues with further testing due after release.

Results
ALL IN A DAYS WORK
2015 Winner of National Marine Electronics Association: Marine App End User Utility

Garmin Helm was released and has maintained a good standing in the App Store (4.5 / 5 stars) and the Google Play Store (3.5 / 5 stars).

"The Garmin Helm App delivers. It is fast - and works well and it is free to download."
Marine Review