Right time, Right place
A set of dashboards that predict where and when marine species are likely to be present.
Right time, Right place(RTRP) are species specific dashboards that help fishers make data driven decisions and reduce bycatch to enable efficient and sustainable fishing.
Project Summary
Scope: The overall project had two products: Deckhand (an iPad app for catch logging) and RTRP (for trip planning). This case study focuses on RTRP.
Goal: To design a universal dashboard that could accommodate all species in one coherent experience.
My Role: I was responsible for creating a coherent design language that can scale to new species, data layers and future features.
Team & Timeline: 4 UX students, 3 weeks
Target audience: Fishery managers, Data and fishery scientists
Problem
The current system uses separate species-specific dashboards with inconsistent design language, also forcing the fishery managers to switch between multiple dashboards just to plan a single trip.
Data flow
Fishery managers
Research
Precedent research
We looked at precedents, such as the Global Fishing Watch and PeskAAS. One thing common is the map placements, highlighted data points and filters options.
Design workshop
The goal was to develop an information architecture and also aimed to identify the categories, the essential data fields required for different types of species.
The core elements for information architecture dashboard are as follows:
Map
Filters
Data charts
Species comparison
Detailed breakdown of the data fields:
Exploring UI structure
We explored multiple ideas for the base structure of the dashboard.
Design workshop
We conducted a card sorting in parallel to wire framing where the workshop focussed on data and layout.
Users: 3 Fishery scientists
What we learned
Users clicks on the map to get catch data for a certain area.
The data can be sorted or filtered according to period, category and species.
Users prefer to download maps to take on their trips.
Want to compare species and understand where bycatch can be avoided.
Mid-fi concepts
Taking all the best parts from the exploration phase, we created couple of more refined concepts:
option 1
option 2
Final concepts
Before
After
Key features included where:
Managers can filter species by time period and fishing method used by fishermen to narrow analysis quickly.
Use environmental data and timeline controls to understand how species movement shifts over time.
Testing with fishery scientists helped refine the system, though validation with fisheries managers is still needed.
Learnings & Trade offs
We prioritised on having all important features up front to make decisions quicker even though this meant the layout was a little busy.
We compared different types of charts and found bar graph to be the most easily understood.
Limiting the dashboard to two charts at a time kept it manageable, but reduced comparison across more variables.
Testing with fishery scientists helped refine the system, though validation with fisheries managers is still needed.
Designed under the influence of 'one last tweak'.
©2026 Rohit Mohan