Have you ever designed a tangled user flow that needed its own sitemap? That’s sailing.
Have you ever watched a user struggle with your navigation, yelling, “Where the hell am I supposed to click?” That’s basically yelling, “Where the hell is the wind coming from?” on a boat.
UX and sailing are… the same thing. Stay with me.
1. You start with a map. Then ignore it.
Every UX project kicks off with a beautiful sitemap. Logical. Linear. Clean.
Then reality happens.
Someone says, “Can we just add a quick feature here?” Suddenly, your lovely journey map is a spaghetti chart that loops back on itself. You’ve officially tacked into the wind.
It’s the same with sailing. You plan a straight course. But oh no—wind shifts. Tide changes. Now you’re zig-zagging across the bay like a confused duck. The map is a suggestion. Not a promise.
2. Your users are basically crew.
They think they know what they’re doing.
You say “click here,” they click somewhere else.
You say “pull the main sheet,” they grab a beer.
You say “we’re almost there,” and you’re still 40 minutes from the dock.
Whether it’s onboarding a new app or hoisting a sail, users need guidance, feedback, and sometimes a gentle nudge (or a loud “DON’T TOUCH THAT!”).
3. Poor affordance = someone falls overboard.
That flat button with no label? That’s the digital version of a deck with no lifelines.
Someone’s going overboard.
Good UX is like good rigging — clearly visible, easy to grab, and ideally not something that smacks you in the head during a gybe. If your user hits the wrong button and ends up in Settings instead of Submit, you designed a rogue wave.
4. Edge cases are like sudden storms.
You didn’t think someone would try using your app in dark mode on an iPhone 7 with airplane Wi-Fi while upside down?
Surprise!
Just like sailing: you will hit rain. You will lose GPS. And someone will try to dock using only hand signals and pure vibes.
Design for the chaos. Or at least have a backup plan (and a bailer).
5. Nobody notices when it’s going well.
If you did your UX job right, no one says a word.
Everything flows. Tasks complete. No one throws a laptop.
Same on the water. If the sails are trimmed and the boat’s gliding, the crew is relaxed and sipping drinks. No drama. No panic. Just good vibes.
But if you forget one little thing—like anchoring the Help icon or tying off a dock line—suddenly it’s chaos, and you’re in a full-on UX post-mortem… or literally trying to recover your boat from drifting into a stranger’s mooring ball.
In conclusion:
UX is sailing.
Sailing is UX.
Both require planning, constant adjustments, knowing your users, and occasionally yelling “WHO DESIGNED THIS?!” into the wind.
And when it all works? Smooth sailing.
Or as we call it in UX: low bounce rate.