Problem
Identifying a prospective problem in social engagements within the communities of sports lovers and athletes. The project team, after a survey, identified the following problems facing sporting social media.
People have to use more than one app to find all of their favorite sports team's updates, content, and scores. The content can at times lack entertainment and simplicity by being in the form of articles making the athlete or fan uninterested, not very engaging, and boring.
Solution
We proposed a solution that will make the platform a place. Users can watch, follow, and interact with all of their favorite teams, athletes, and fans to stay up to date on the latest sports news and stay entertained with original content. Skillz allows users to post videos and photos making it easy for them to view and retain important sports information, as well as showcase their talents and skills.
Proto-Personas
Our team came up with a proto-persona, who will be the ideal user of the SKILLZ app. We created this persona to streamline our research and know who we will ideally interview for our research. We created 3 proto-persona but for the scope of this project, we will focus on one persona. The FAN persona will be targeting the demographics of the typical FAN accessing the platform for sporting social media and networking.
User Interviews Highlights
“Watching live games is my favorite kind of content. Additionally, I like to watch comedic skits, highlights, and fails.”
— Chase J.
“Staying up to date and getting involved makes me an informed fan who doesn’t have to ask questions during the games. It keeps me involved and connected with the players and the team.”
— Jason W.
User Research and Analysis
For the project, we conducted research to understand the question "What kind of social interaction, does a sports lover want? So they can see their favorite sport played across the world. In a way, they can learn, laugh, and know new skills from this sport"
We conducted this research with the following 3 objectives in mind.
- We want to know how sport lovers connect
- We want to know what content sports lovers want to see
- I want to know how everyone, fans, athletes, and scouts can benefit from a sporting community.
Interview Insights
During the research we also gathered some user insights, we asked more questions, met with potential users, and asked them relevant questions regarding our app. They gave us an insight that opened up the possibility of problem statements and solutions. We also designed an affinity diagram, to categorize the priorities of insights by all the users.
Problem Statement
Sports enthusiasts have a hard time finding a platform where they can share a connection with their favorite sports teams, athletes, and fans. They need a platform where they can receive updates about their favorite sports teams, athletes, and games. Many sports fans and athletes would love to share their favorite moments from old games, practices, and gaming experiences, as well as their top wins and fails. How might we help our athletes showcase their talents and their highlights, connect with their favorite fans, and engage in a community where they all can enjoy their favorite sports content?
Affinity Diagram
Insight Statement
After a survey and research on approximately 14 users, we found out that individuals who love sports and fitness activities, love to follow sports channels and their favorite players. These individuals like to have a common platform where they can see their favorite team, and players (athletes) and where they can share with friends moments, and skills they learn and fails in games and practice.
Users need to see clips and pictures of other players and fans from their favorite teams because gaming spirit is enjoyable in moments of victory, failure, and togetherness.
We can help individuals connect to a community of sports lovers by creating a platform where, they can see sporting clips they want and watch athletes they want, as well as create a platform for themselves where they can showcase skills they learn, they fail, and the gains.
Empathy Map
We created an Empathy map! This was a detailed way to express our users' feelings across the board, we took opinions of feeling from the users we interviewed and we created Empathy details putting into focus their pains, gains, say, needs, think and wants.
Competitor Analysis
We considered some of the competitors in the sporting media and socials, it is very competitive and we tried to identify what makes them different in features, competitive advantages, strengths, and weaknesses. We used this analysis to determine our strengths and what we can do differently to make our app more appealing. The major advantage of the competitor's analysis was we access customer reviews of the other apps and tapped into what Users wanted to have on sports social media.
