Redesign cruise travel experience.
How might we create an immersive travel experience?
Silversea is the world's most luxurious cruise line, operating expedition voyages to remote destinations such as the Galápagos.
Service Designer at Sketchin, leading research and co-creation across guests, naturalists and executives.
Silversea needed to reinvent the onboard experience aboard Silver Origin — turning a luxury vessel into an immersive bridge between life at sea and the wonders of the Galápagos. Through field research with 40+ guests and guides, four passenger personas and a 51-job co-creation workshop, we shaped the Basecamp: a hybrid space where guests learn the islands, share memories and prepare for excursions. The result is a new cruise paradigm where ship and archipelago become a single, continuous story.
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Silversea commissioned Sketchin to design the contents, interactions and spatial characteristics of the Basecamp — a unique highlight of Silver Origin, the most luxurious vessel in the fleet, crafted for the Galápagos.
Space prototyping, desk research and extensive field research. We searched for new technologies, looked for inspiration at fairs and exhibitions, then flew to the Galápagos and went aboard the cruise to observe guests and hear their voices.
In Miami, a stakeholder workshop produced 51 jobs to be done — from naturalists to executives, in the same room — co-creating the main aspects of the onboard experience.
In Rome, a week of workshops with Silversea's naturalists gathered the island-by-island knowledge that became the content for the totem interaction. Installation followed at the Port of Rotterdam.
The Basecamp is one segment of a wider system: immersive briefings for excursions, interactive 6×2m lectures, a unified storytelling and visual style across all digital content, and tools for guests to upload, share and vote on their best Galápagos snapshots.
Core team of two service designers, two visual designers, a design director and strategist, and one UX designer. 24 additional professionals joined across disciplines in later stages.
Outcome
Passengers can live a brand new idea of cruise thanks to a hybrid experience that connects on-site expeditions with life aboard the ship.
The Basecamp is designed to make guests play with stories of the islands, get insights about their animals and share memories from their adventures, while becoming familiar with the itinerary.
Some of the pictures are taken from the Sketchin website — visit sketchin.ch ↗ to know more.