While watching the Creighton Bluejays upset the Iowa Hawkeyes during the 2022 women’s NCAA March Madness basketball tournament, I noticed that the arena was fully packed with passionate fans.
This inspired Half Court Sports, a personal project with the goal of helping sports fans build meaningful connections with female athletes and learn more about women's sports.
Role
Designer + Researcher
Duration
July 2022 - August 2022
Research
To better understand the current women's sports landscape, I conducted secondary research, user interviews, and a competitive analysis. By doing so, I was able to get a more representative perspective of women's sports fans and understand fans current engagement level with women's sports
Defining the Problem
After conducting research, I used some of my key research findings to define the problem and guide me throughout the ideation process.
How might we highlight female athletes' stories to help establish a stronger connection with fans and make women's sports content more accessible?
Site Mapping
Prior to sketching my initial ideas, I created a site map to plan and prioritize the important features and screens that needed to be implemented.
Sketches + Low Fidelity Wireframes
After organizing the key features, I proceeded sketch a rough layout of the mobile app and then converted them to low-fidelity wireframes. Through this iterative process, I added more detailed designs and features to the wireframes.
After multiple iterations and refinements, I arrived at a final user-centered design solution that is a reflection of my research findings and problem statement.
Onboarding
During the onboarding process, the user can choose their favorite leagues, teams, or players to access a personalized home feed when entering the app to have a customized experience tailored to their interests and preferences.
Home & Event Details
On the homepage, users are presented with the upcoming events for their teams, as well as their personalized feed consisting of social media content, articles, and highlights. This personalized feed provides users with a quick and easy way to stay up-to-date with the latest news and updates from their preferred sources.
Once the user selects an event, they are able to see the main feed for that event, as well as important player and team stats.
Team Details
When a user selects a team to view, they are able to access the team's upcoming events, league standings, entire schedule, and a dedicated team feed. One of the key features I prioritized based on market research is the team roster, which allows users to view player images and stats to gain a deeper understanding of the individual players on the team.
Player Details
On a player's page, users can access a variety of information, including the player's social media feed, relevant articles, and highlights.
By being able to view the player's social media content, users can gain insights into the player's personality and interests beyond sports. This allows users to build a deeper connection with the player and creates a more engaging and personalized user experience.
In addition to the social media content, users can also access the player's stats and a brief biography, which includes the player's career accolades. This provides users with a more detailed look at the player's performance and achievements throughout their career.
Trending
The trending page features a curated selection of articles and highlights from leagues, teams, and players that users may not be following. This provides users with an opportunity to discover new and exciting content from a wide range of sources.
By showcasing trending content from across the platform, users can expand their knowledge and interest in different leagues, teams, and players. This helps create a more engaging and diverse user experience, and allows users to stay up-to-date with the latest news and trends in the world of women's sports.
Community & Events
The community page provides users with a platform to share their reactions, opinions, and comments on a team's community. This creates a space where users can engage with one another and build a sense of community around their shared interests.
The events page provides users with an at-a-glance view of upcoming events, allowing them to easily plan and stay up-to-date with their favorite sports.
Reflection
As a personal project, this design allowed me to experiment with different research methods and technical aspects of design. Throughout the process, I learned many lessons that will impact my future design work.
One of my main takeaways was the importance of constantly referring back to my research findings and problem statements. At times, I found myself exploring design ideas that did not align with the user's needs or the original problem statements. Having these documents as a reference helped me to stay on track and ensure that my designs were user-centered.
Also, I found myself trying to solve too many problems at once. I realized that quality is better than quantity, and looking back I could have focused on solving one problem exceptionally well.
If I had more time, I would have liked to explore the comment section on different posts as it can create a sense of community within the app.