Sailboat: Maintenance Management for Catalina Island Camps

Overview

Company	Catalina Island Camps
Role	Senior UX Designer (Contract), the only designer on the project. Discovery, UX and UI.
Team	Me on design and one engineer. Together we ran the project end to end with the camp director, site manager and maintenance technicians.
Timeline	June–September 2026, built while camp was in session
Platform	Web app for site managers and technicians, plus QR-code reporting for guests

Since starting my career in UX, I’d wanted a project that brought the design world and the camp world together. Sailboat was that project.

The Problem

Maintenance at camp ran on whiteboards, texts and phone calls. Issues got scribbled on a board and handed to the maintenance staff, then followed up in text threads.

That made three things hard to see:

01
What needed to be done
02
Who was working on what
03
What was already finished

Language added a hidden cost. Most of the technicians speak Spanish, so the site manager was running messages back and forth through Google Translate.

Illustration of camp’s old maintenance whiteboard: jobs like a broken dining hall table, boys bathroom lights, a nail sticking up on the dive deck and a cracked van window, scrawled in marker with names like Henry, Kate and Spencer beside them. Some are crossed out, one name is half-erased next to “who?”, and a red note says “text Henry re: deck”. — Before Sailboat, the status of every job lived on a whiteboard and in one person’s phone.

Users

User	What they need	What they do in Sailboat
Site manager	One place to see everything happening around camp	Reviews requests, assigns tasks, manages assets, tracks progress
Technicians	Clear instructions in their own language	See assigned tasks, post updates, mark work complete
Guests and staff	A quick way to report a problem without downloading anything	Scan a QR code posted around camp and submit a request

Discovery

I started with an unusual advantage. I’d worked at the camp as a counselor and had seen how clunky the whiteboard system was long before the camp director asked our two-person team to build a solution.

The most useful research was also the simplest. The site manager walked us through how he assigned and followed up on work, and that walkthrough surfaced the problem nobody had put in the brief. He was relaying messages through Google Translate so his Spanish-speaking technicians could understand them, then translating their replies back.

Translation wasn’t something the camp asked for. But once we saw how much time that back-and-forth was taking, I pushed for it to become a core feature rather than a nice-to-have.

Flow diagram of the old process. An issue is found (a note asks who reports it, since guests often ignore issues or hunt someone down), written on the whiteboard, then the site manager texts the technician using Google Translate. If the technician fixes it, they erase it from the whiteboard. If the technician has questions, they text the site manager, the manager translates the reply with Google Translate, then works out next steps. — The old process, mapped from the site manager’s walkthrough. Google Translate sat in the middle of every back-and-forth.

Key Decisions

1. Automatic translation for every task and reply

Sailboat automatically translates tasks, updates and comments into each user’s preferred language. The site manager writes in English, technicians read in Spanish, and replies come back the same way.

The Google Translate workaround was the slowest part of the whole process, and it only worked when the site manager had time to do it. Making translation automatic took him out of the middle.

Sailboat’s task list on an iPhone in English: “My Tasks (13)” with tasks for the Dining Hall (a broken table with a loose leg), the Sports Court (a light that won’t turn on) and the Boys’ Bathroom (two stall lights out), each due 06/20/2026 with High priority and a View details link. — The same task list in English and Spanish. Everyone sees Sailboat in their own language, with no copy-pasting in between.

The same task list in Spanish on an Android phone: “Mis Tareas (13)” with Comedor, Cancha deportiva and Baño de niños, each with Fecha límite, Alta priority and a Ver detalles link. — The same task list in English and Spanish. Everyone sees Sailboat in their own language, with no copy-pasting in between.

2. Report a problem by scanning a QR code

Anyone at camp can scan a QR code posted around the property and submit a maintenance request.

Camp guests and short-term staff will never download an app to report a broken light. A QR code needs no account, download or training, so problems get reported where they’re spotted.

3. One shared record for every issue

Every request becomes a task with its own history. Updates are added to the task itself, so the site manager, technicians and director all see the same status. Recurring tasks, like routine checks, are tracked too, so they don’t depend on someone remembering.

Visibility was where the old system really failed. Information lived on a whiteboard in one building and in texts on one person’s phone.

A Sailboat task on an iPhone: asset Golden Doubloon, High priority, In Progress, repeating monthly, due 06/20/2026. The problem is to check the fire boxes. Notes show the history: Eric checked the front fire boxes, Tom asked about the one by the back door, and Eric replied that it had expired and a replacement was ordered. Buttons read Add Note and Mark as Complete. — Every update lands on the task itself, so everyone sees the same status.

Sailboat’s Recurring Tasks page on a laptop. Two tasks: Check fire boxes on the Golden Doubloon, assigned to Eric Simpson, next due June 20, 2026, High priority, monthly; and Change Oil on the Isuzu Flatbed, assigned to Edwin Padilla, next due October 21, 2026, Medium priority, every six months, with notes on oil type, filters and disposal. — Routine checks come back on schedule, so nobody has to remember them.

Sailboat’s Assets page on a laptop: a grid of camp buildings, boats and other assets such as the Dinghy, Yawl, Whaler, Dock, Van #2, Dive Deck and Dining Hall, each showing its asset type and number of open requests. — Assets live in the same system, so issues connect to the equipment they affect.

Results

Sailboat launched at the end of summer 2026 and is used daily across camp.

100+ issues tracked in the first two months
Daily use across camp

No more whiteboard: requests, assignments and updates all live in one place
No more manual translation: technicians get every task in Spanish automatically
Routine checks on a schedule, so nothing depends on memory

Sailboat maintenance history table listing completed jobs by asset, problem, technician, status, priority and due date, with filters and a CSV export button. — Every job, who did it and when, in one searchable log.

Sailboat is already working well and making tracking the various problems around camp much easier, so thank you!

Site Manager, Catalina Island Camps

Reflection

Translation was never in the brief
It came from paying attention to a workaround the site manager mentioned in passing.
Engaged users made it better, fast
The site manager and technicians were open, quick to give feedback and invested in making it work. That close loop let us refine Sailboat with real feedback while we built it.
What’s next
I’d like to measure time-to-fix before and after, and see how often guests use the QR reporting.