SportsYapp: A social platform for sports fans to share their support and energy wherever they may be.
The goal
The goal was to redesign the existing app to improve a sports fan’s overall experience, via game day interactions, and to create an aesthetically pleasing UI with inclusion to additional features to provide more value to its users.
These additional features are;
Game audio-chat rooms; Think clubhouse/Twitter spaces but for sports/games as they happen!
Game prediction; Users get to predict winning teams and scores for games before it starts and before it ends.
Match feature; Just like in dating applications, the app matches two users who have the same location follow/support the same teams and games.
Direct messaging; This means users can now have conversations with each other on the platform.
Coin incentive system; Here users receive coin incentives when they like, comment, post shots, predict games, etc and when their coin gets to a certain amount, they receive rewards.
User research
The UX phase began with getting to know the users and their behaviors and the research goal was aimed at getting a clear idea of the problem as it directly affects the users, and to uncover their needs and frustrations to better understand how to create a better experience for them.
To understand where the problem was coming from and to know the areas to improve, I had to conduct some research with my target audience. I created a survey form and shared it with sports fans sportsYapp users. Had a virtual interview with about 3 sports fans to understand their thought process while using the app. I also observed my behavior and the frustrations encountered on the app.
Based on the research insights/ feedbacks key challenges were identified.
Wireframes and iterations
When I started approaching the design problem, I sketched out some options of how I could improve the existing design and resolve the above-mentioned problems. I got to iterate on what would work and what wouldn’t and then I converted my sketch to Mid-fidelity wireframes, this made the visual design process easier and faster.
Understanding game-day experiences
The next step taken to better understand our users was to understand how their game-day experience works.
Since this app focuses on game-day interactions, I needed to consider how to enhance the experience for onsite fans' and bring the live-action closer for offsite fans.
The redesign
User Onboarding
Designed an onboarding using the combination and progressive onboarding approach to help the user ease into the app’s experience. Instead of bombarding them with everything at the start, provided users with just enough information to keep things moving; This approach ensures that the user is enlightened and knows what to expect at every point.
Sign up/ Login flow
Home page
The home page displays the ongoing games, total coins earned overtime and posts from fans, just like in facebook news feed/timeline, you get see comments and posts from fans you follow on your home page.
Discovery page
Users can discover games from both teams they follow and teams their friends follow. This is because some users like to see what other people are doing, finding games their friends are following enlightens them, and that enlightenment is needed to keep them engaged.
Users can discover prediction analysis for games; this is to help motivate them to predict games.
Users can now discover their matches and new teams to follow; This is to enable them to connect with more people on the platform and follow more teams to see more games.
User Search
I provided tabs for sorting so users don’t have to leave the search results page while switching between preferences. In this case, filters would support the interaction flow and allow users to tune their search better.
Game rooms
This is one interesting part users seem to love the most. An audio-based chatroom where sportsfans can have both audio-chat and text-chat. How does it work?
Pretty similar to clubhouse/twitter spaces; users get to create and join rooms. Each game has only a single room, this means if a room has already been created for a game, you can only join and request to speak and if it hasn’t been created, you can create it.
Users can navigate between text and audio chat.Profile /edit profile
Game Prediction
Users who predict, receive coin incentives which are automatically added to their coin wallet.
Since we’re trying to drive more engagement, we included a direct messaging system that allows a fan to directly message another fan. Now Fans (Users) do not only have an option of following an individual they like, but they can also connect directly with them.
Just as they do it in dating apps, they also get matched with users who share the same locations, interests and follow the same teams as them
Game day experience
Thanks for reading!
