TeamUp

Keep team sport players close with the communities

BACKGROUND

The number of sports team clubs are growing rapidly yet the sport community are not catching up

Team sports are growing fast all around China. It can also feel utterly lost and time-consuming for first-timers to find and sign up for those exciting events/games. 

Ultimate frisbee only has gained over 500k new players in the past few years. From July 2022 to June 2023, Ultimate frisbee community has hosted 72 games for 455 teams/clubs. Oftentimes, looking for a team that fits first-timers takes quite a lot of app-hopping and waiting. 

The frustration of the manual and distracting search process on social media gives new opportunities for a single and consistent platform for people to play, connect and grow in the local sport communities. 

CHALLENGE

Sports teams fail to enhance individual player’s commitment

As an Ultimate frisbee player, I’ve witnessed the growth of the team sports in Shanghai over the past few years. Yet many of sport teams fail to guarantee a good experience for individual players, therefore have a high dropout rate. It sparked the question: why is there a commitment issue?

SOLUTIONS

Social support are the key

Searching and Creating Communities and Groups

  • Search online to offline communities where players can meet up organically

  • Allow public discussion about any sports related topics

  • users can create their own public or private rooms and invite their teammates

Manage personal goals, statistic and team communication

  • Track team statistics

  • Manage team-related goals & communication

  • Emphasize the importance of individual pride and unique contributions

Look for an events that fit your needs

  • Easy search based on users’ interests and level

  • Distance is also an important factor based on the user interviews

  • Allow users to post questions about the event or contact the host if needed

WHITE PAPER RESEARCH

Social support is the source of team commitment

Starting with white paper research, I began to draw from research articles on the topic of team commitment and the source of that commitment.

“Enjoyment (positive emotional response to the sport experience), involvement opportunities(benefits that come with participating in sport), personal investments(time, energy, money, and effort that are put into the activity that cannot be recovered if participation is discontinued) and social support have been found to be positively related to sport commitment among youth, elite-amateur, and professional sports athletes. “

There are two types of social support:

Emotional social support - the encouragement, caring, and empathy received from significant people to the athlete such as parents, coaches, and teammates.

Informational social support - the provision of useful information, guidance, or advice received from significant people.

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

The Competitors had NO SOCIAL SUPPORT aspects

None of them has built a way to enhance social support and community explore.

USER RESEARCH

My Interviewees are more likely to commit to a team when there is more social support in the team.

From 9 user interviews, I learned that generally they think participating in a team sports is fun and meaningful (enjoyment aspect). But at the same time, they almost all felt that the experience can be energy-wasting and unfulfilling due to the lack of social support. 6 of them have dropped out from multiple teams for this reason.

I then further looked into the user interviews through affinity mapping. It helps synthesize quotes and observations collected during user interviews to extract important insights.

Theme 1: Friends & Community

The majority of the respondents go to the sport events because their friends are going too.

Getting to know the community is more important than attending one specific events.

Theme 2: Competitiveness

Playing competitively is fun but uneven competitive levels in or among teams will cause bad event experience.

Majority of the respondents, regardless of their competitive level, hope to have professional experience.

Theme 3: Performance

My interviewees is more motivated and committed to go when they are able to see their own improvement.

💡App should provide a way to connect & share in the community for the users

Lack of positive feedback will discourage them.

💡App should help users to search event by competitive level

My interviewees care about having shared goals.

Wining a game means there is a discount of individual experience.

💡App should provide a feature for users to manage and communicate in a team level to enhance team dynamic

PERSONA

Meet TJ

MOODBOARD

The Style Guide

DESIGN DECISIONS

3 Major Design Changes

What I’d do differently next time…

This was my first-ever UX project (Hooray)! 🎉. More than the actual output, however- I’m immensely grateful to have been through an entire UX process so I can see what it’s actually like. On that note, a few things I’ve learned:

  1. Scope down the project. I started off this project with a very general user problem and ended up creating the wireframe without a clear focus. On the one side, I’m trying to help people find events that fit their level of competitiveness, yet on the other side, I’m building up an internal team communication feature. Moving forward, I will focus on solving a clearer customer problem instead of an entire app.

  2. Be aware of the tradeoffs with design solutions. ****In the beginning of the stage, I’ve synthesized two personas, the first one is the event organizer, the other one is the event attendee. After a few discussion with mentors, I bear in mind that business interests also play a part in the design decisions.

  3. Feedback and iteration are important. I’ve “re-started” my project one time because I wanted to make sure every aspect of the app was designed with intention.