Lina Bodestad

Case study

Cetasol (iHelm): guiding marine behavior changes with dignity

Head of UX, Cetasol AB. Consultant at Layer 10 AB. Gothenburg, 2021 to 2022.

A container ship loaded with colourful containers, seen from above as it cuts a white wake through deep blue water A container ship loaded with colourful containers, seen from above as it cuts a white wake through deep blue water

What if ships on the sea could use "eco driving" to save fuel, just like cars on the road? Cetasol is a marine sustainability startup with an IoT and SaaS platform, iHelm, that puts sensors on vessels and guides captains to operate more energy-efficiently. As Head of UX in the founding team, I built the customer and user understanding that shaped the early product. My role covered user research and contextual inquiry on board, designing the on-board and admin web interfaces in Figma, designing the company website, and support the CEO on grant applications and early market strategy decisions.

Outcome: the project continues and Cetasol is expanding across Europe, Asia, and other markets. Early pilot tests, in the company's first year, showed around 30% lower CO2 emissions.

Why it matters for AI adoption: guiding experts to change established habits without making them feel judged, is the same adoption challenge as introducing AI to a skeptical workforce.

The iHelm designs: the captain's docking screen on a tablet, with a map, destination, target time, fuel use per hour and per nautical mile, and speed; and the admin dashboard on a laptop, with vessel overview, insight cards and an energy consumption chart

Methods and tools

Methods: user interviews, contextual inquiry, user research, jobs-to-be-done analysis, website layout and design, UX writing and content design, marketing, close collaboration with developers, strategic user insights advice, agile development.

Tools: Figma, Miro, Trello.

What I learned

Doing user research in the right context was key in the marine commercial segment: a ship's work environment is very different from an office. Being part of a startup core team also taught me a lot about business development, time to market, and business strategy.