Savvy Navvy is a disruptor in the downloadable navigation app business, challenging fixed plotter companies worldwide on all fronts with considerable technical advances that iterate quickly.

I spoke to David Cusworth, Partnership Manager, because I saw his name and contact details repeatedly on the app store reviews and comments section: whenever a user had a complaint (rather than just an opinion) – there was David with his helpful comment and email address offering to carry on the conversation if that’s what was needed. So I reached out because that’s what I do when I am working on an article…

David Cusworth – Savvy /Navy

I worked in Yacht Racing. I worked on the Clipper Round the world race for 15 years. So I was either on yachts or working in yacht events for 15 years and before that I was in the Navy, so I don’t have a tech background or electronics background; I’ve got a navigation background.

I work with some of our business partners. There are two sides to Savvy Navvy (SN). When we first launched it was a Business-to-consumer (B2C) app and primarily a pre-planning tool. So people would use the app at home, plan what they want to do because within the app you’ve got weather, tide, charts, everything you need. So you can sit on your sofa, you can do all your planning . A chartplotter (CP) is fixed to your boat so it doesn’t do you any good at all until you get to your boat. So people would use apps like SN to plan before they went out on the water. That B2C side is the biggest part of our business for sailors, powerboaters, paddleboarders, kayaks.

We also work with manufacturers who build CPs and boat management systems; we work with boat builders; we’re working with some electric engine manufacturers… So that’s where I spend most of my time, looking at where we can integrate our technology into another platform to make the platform give a more rounded solution.

Does SN work on other manufacturers CPs?

We launched what we call our integrated solutions about a year ago, so we’re working with an American manufacturer/builder called ARC based in LA, so SN charts and features are built into all their boats. So they build their own screens. Their background is kind of… lots of their engineers are from TESLA and SpaceX and people like that, so they wanted to look at the TESLA model where they build everything.

They build the boat from the ground up, they don’t use garmin, raymarine or B&G because I think for lots of new people to the market, what they see in marine now is a bit like cars were in the 80s where you would have your satnav that you would stick to your windscreen, like a Tom Tom, or something, but now you just plug your phone into your car and everything just works.

Rather than put a traditional CP on a boat that doesn’t really talk to anything else on the boat – it just has one job – they’re looking for a more integrated solution, so they can take little pieces of SN, add it into their boat management systems but it fully integrates with their engine management and their fuel consumption and their infotainment systems as well.

We’re working with RAD in the UK, who build electric outboards; Avicus who are an autonomous boat management system. Avicus has a system where they integrate into other CPs so their system will work on a garmin or a raymarine, but they use SN charts. And then there are a couple of others about to be announced where a new player in the market is building a CP, but a CP that does much more and uses our technology.

Are you letting others use your software without your badge on it?

They have to license because we license all our data from the Hydrographic Offices (HO’s) all a round the world, so we have to pay a license fee to them, so companies pay a license fee to us, so we can manage usage, report back to HO’s and let them know and pay them what we need to pay them. In most cases it shows the SN logo, ‘powered by SN’, so within our chart view you can see the logo as well. That’s not happening in all cases but in the majority.

What are the most common queries that you can fix quickly?

There are some things around misunderstanding about how the app works. Where people are used to on a plotter: you drop two points it draws you a straight line and it’ll tell you to get from cowes to lymington you very roughly head northwest and it’ll draw you a straight line.

Whereas what SN will do, we take into account the wind and the tide, so we show you where to tack, we show you where the depth is going to affect your boat, so you need to steer away from shallower water; if there are shipping lanes, we show you how to cross at right angles.

People are very often confused by all the course corrections that we show, because they’re used to seeing a straight line. So explaining what the app is doing is probably one of the easiest fixes and something that comes up a lot because people are just not used to that level of smart tech in the algorithm.

We get people trying to use the offline charts so how to download a SN chart and use it when you don’t have any coverage. That sometimes trips people up a little bit, because they don’t quite understand how that’s going to work.

We get lots of questions about: can I use SN on my CP? So that’s quite an easy one to answer: in most cases no, because the traditional CP manufacturers like a closed system, whereby if you’re garmin, you can use Garmin; if you’re raymarine, you can use raymarine.

Strangely they will allow each other onto their plotters but they won’t allow anybody else in. So you can export routes from SN to a CP, so that’s quite an easy thing to do, but the app itself and the charts themselves you can’t use on a plotter. So that’s quite a common one, whether SN will integrate with a Plotter…

We have questions around things like the subscriptions and the charges are the kind of things we have to answer but are not really relevant to the service itself.

Chart coverage is a big one that comes up: where to do we have charts? Because a big difference with what we do, we give global chart coverage, we don’t sell regional packs, so if you sail in the UK but you’re going to charter in the Mediterranean we have people ask: do I need to pay again, do I need to download more data. You just have everything. So that’s quite a common one that comes up.

And then just understanding how the app itself works; where things are; how the user interface works. When we first launched the app it was very intuitive and it was really easy to find everything. As we’ve added more features, that obviously becomes a little bit harder, so we’ve added lots of help videos and guides and tips that we didn’t have before. So letting people know about that.

Another one that we’re getting more and more now is how people can link different devices, because you can use the app on 5 different devices so a tablet, a laptop, a phone… so how people can link those devices is a common one that’s coming up at the moment.

You mention that the app used to be very intuitive, but since adding more features it becomes less so: Which is the ‘new’ feature that triggered the beginning of the ‘confusion’?

I’m not sure there was one particular thing, it was just when we add things like the AIS layer, where do you put that in the app so that it’s not on the display all the time? When you’ve got the wind animation, where do you put the button so that you can turn wind on and off?

The tidal flow, because you can see the tidal flow on the chart as well as the tidal heights, so it was just really organising where those things go; the different chart layers, like satellite overlay, relief shading, day view, night view; where to put those layers so they’re all in one place but they’re not cluttering the view on the chart, because the key thing you want when you’re out there is you want to see where you are and what’s around you so you want a really uncluttered view of your world.

But then you need somewhere that’s easy to find where you can turn off and on different layers, like AIS and wind and tide and things like that, so as we added more, we then had a completely separate tab where you can tap on a chart layer icon and it then brings up all of the chart layers that you can add in. When we added the anchor alarm, where do you put the anchor alarm? And how do you explain how to set the anchor alarm?

So it’s more the organisation: it’s not that it’s complicated to use; it’s us trying to think through… and we do lots and lots of research with our users about: ‘Intuitively where do you think you would find this feature?’ because what we believe is: what is intuitive is not always what the user thinks is intuitive and it doesn’t really matter what we think it’s what the user thinks, so if we see that they’re all going to one particular place to look for something and it’s not there, then we’ll do more research and maybe we’ll move it there. So we’re very much user led rather than technology-and-our-own-belief led. If that makes sense.

We’re constantly checking back with users. We launched a program that‘s been really effective, maybe about two years ago now, working with boating instructors. We give free accounts to instructors and they give us lots of feedback on what works, what features are missing, what features they’d like to see and then they use the app in the training courses.

It was all kind of wrapped up around the RYA’s launch of digital first, when UKHO said ‘we’re not going to print paper charts after 2030’ and the paper chart and the more traditional teaching navigation to boaters on paper… when that started to move to digital, that fell in line with everything we were already doing.

So that digital first process that the RYA launched was already a path that we were on, and so to help instructors implement digital first and to teach it to students we give them the app, we give discounts to students. We’re not saying: ‘Here’s an app and it does everything for you.’

What we want to do is make your life easier and save you time when you’re on the water, but we want you to understand what’s going on in the background. So we still want people to go and do a traditional training course. The app is just another tool in that navigation toolbox.

So we’ve had some really useful feedback from instructors on new features to add in, like a three-point fix we added in so if GPS fails, you can use the app and find your position using bearing lines; chart annotations – you can draw on the chart now within the app; they’re all things that come from users and instructors, so we’re constantly listening to our audience and then adapting what we do.

We’re not just building something and saying: ‘Here it is; go and buy it. We think it’s fantastic.’ We’re refining it and adapting it constantly.

I think it’s helpful that the founder of Savvy Navvy Jelte Liebrand, who had the idea for the app.. He worked on google maps, so a lot of our functionality is very similar to google maps, so people are used to using google when they’re walking around a city or when they’re in their car, so actually a lot of it is that muscle memory plays into it a little bit.

The trickier thing to get across is that ‘Yes it is that intuitive’. Because people are used to a CP where you’ve got to click 5 tabs across to find something then you have to find your way back. It’s often quite old technology; the processing power is not… your phone is more powerful than most CPs.

It’s just a fact that the processing power within it and the things it can do and it’s a touch screen instead of a lot of little buttons that you need to press back and forth so reminding people there’s an easier way to do things on a boat in the same way you can do them walking around a city streets or do in your car, that, I think is more of a hurdle. Just educating people about the simplicity is strangely harder than you think.