My Role: Designer focusing on product and Visual design.
Tasks: Design direction socialization, product vision, interaction design, prototyping, running design sprints, and a close partnership with research teams.
Platforms: IOS
Tools used: Pencil & paper, Figma, Jira, After effects
Project: Personal project
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Background
Base addresses a problem many soccer fanatics often face: finding venues to play at, to find someone to enjoy it with. Base addresses this by offering a unique way to play and a networking experience with other soccer fanatics.
Problem
Our research identified 3 primary problems with this space
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Dated
People unanimously agreed that most apps looked visually dated and out of touch with modern website design.
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Cluttered
People felt these apps cluttered, especially compared to generic booking apps.
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Overwhelming
People felt these apps asked for too many unnecessary details, which was quite demotivating.
Workflow
Research
Methodologies and Insights
I synthesized the results into a typical user's playing journey. I discovered there were three clear phases where users struggled and realized the pain points were interdependent: planning the game, connecting with other Fanatics, and exploring the journey of playing soccer solo.
How might we help soccer fanatics discover unique turf experiences and companions to play with?
PATH FORWARD
For the tracking experience, I tried to break down the scope of the solution into 'how might we statements:
Goals
We converted our critical problems into opportunities to solve during our ideation.
Dated ➡️ Modern
The App's user interface should be visually refreshed and use a new visual language based on modern Progressive App tech.
Disjointed ➡️ Connected
Connect with other fanatics using the App messaging feature to keep yourself updated with the global soccer community.
Ambiguous ➡️ Discover
The App should make critical features easier to find and use, remove underperforming components, and ensure we show the right content to the user across the App.
A set of design principles to guide decisions
I created a set of design principles to guide and validate my design decisions. Such practice helped me hold myself accountable to the end user and create a cohesive and unified experience.
Design iterations
The app went through many iterations before we had a shippable design candidate.
Long scroll, Less work
Users preferred the long scroll option. However, The tab option worked better because it effectively categorized communication and made navigating and accessing information easier.
More visuals
We tested both concepts to find out which idea resonated more with users. The users liked the feature of top stats and the idea of adding delightful gamification elements.
Solution
COMING ALL TOGETHER
Simple set-up process
Setting up the Process for playing soccer has always been challenging. The step-by-step process allows users to stay calm.
Discovering soccer turfs
Ryan, a soccer fanatic looking for ways to be more active, uses Base to discover unique turf game experiences.
He wants to find games and people to play with, so he uses the app to find games around him and look for possible available slots.
After finding the most suitable game, he looks for an available position and confirms his availability.
Connect and socialise
Ryan opens his connections to see who he has connected with and can see all his chats.
He can talk to many fanatics to coordinate any logistics
Members who want to get to know their teammates can look up their profiles to start conversations and add new players
Game history
They can always check out their team and the line-up for the game.
Ryan opens his teammate's profiles to see their stats, how many games they have played, and what games they will play next.
Members can also check their achievements, top stats, and the game's leading scorers.
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Testing insights
“It was hard for users to know what information to focus on because there wasn’t enough hierachy between elements.”
“Users needed clarification about the visual language. Adding labels would make their functions more clear.
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“Things move fast, and maintaining connections and relevancy is crucial to building products that fit into a larger whole. ”
🪞Reflection:
Expand into other activities.
Currently, Base only offers adventures, but as the product gains traction, more categories could be added to expand the user base and grow market share.
Designers should lean on their strengths to define strategy.
While the “ask” was pretty straightforward, the problem we’re solving from the user’s perspective wasn’t so clear. Understanding user behavior and needs to be allowed us to take a journey-based, holistic approach that yields a high impact for both the business and the user.
Being comfortable in the unknown
We needed to stay nimble and flexible with the many adjustments and pivots during the project and shifting business priorities.