SF Fan: Google Design 5-day Sprint
Concept - October 2016
Summary
As excitement is bubbling up for game day, you find yourself a little disoriented by the smells of food, the jockeying of crowds, and the rush to find assigned seats. Soon you are comfortably settled in, but your mind wanders as a lull in the game stretches beyond a few minutes. For the first time visitor this might be never-ending, for the baseball enthusiast your patience is running thin in hopes of the next home run.
For the team at Ixonos, we concepted the SF Fan app, to bring disconnected users back to the game and engaged in the venue space. We used the Google Design 5-day Sprint for the first time to identify our problem and come up with solutions for venue spaces, using AT&T Park as an example.
Goals
• Find a new and better process for our team
• Create an engaging app with features that can be adapted to different venue spaces.
• Cultivate work culture
Key skills UX design / prototype / wireframes
Google Sprint Summary
Team
Decider – Greg Pierson
Finance expert – Erick Hong
Marketing expert – Trenton Temple
Customer expert – Anne Eckholm
Design expert – Vivian Kwok (me)
Tech/Logistics expert – Robert Hajek
Facilitator – Stefan Belavy
Monday
Start at the End
List out the goals to get an overview of the project. Agree to a long term goal.
Map
Identify problems to solve and map out the issue.
Ask the experts
Interview experts and get insight in the market space.
Target
Choose an area to focus on for your product sprint.
Tuesday
Remix & Improve
Research ideas and inspiration and present findings to fellow team members.
Sketch
Sketch out detailed solutions on paper individually.
Wednesday
Decide
Choose the best solutions individually. Regroup to go over the best ideas.
Rumble
Keep competing ideas alive
Storyboard
Create a user flow and plan for the prototype.
Thursday
Prototype
Find the right tools and divide and conquer.
Friday
Testing
Get big insights from 5 customers
Interview
Create the moment.
Ask the right questions.
Learn patterns
Find patterns and plan the next step.
Problem
In addition to solving for way-finding and easy payment systems in venues, we wanted to keep users in the experience of being at a ball game. Once the ball game slowed down, we found fans to be easily distracted and and disconnected from the sport and their environment.
Solution
Using the Google Sprint Method, we honed in on a loyalty program that would get users excited about the game. What we loved the most was bringing back the baseball card and modernizing it for the digital world.
Home Feed
The home feed is the base where users can receive updates on special promotions, latest activities, and notifications about the events.
Card Collections
Like traditional baseball collector cards, users can collect a variety of cards, like player cards, landmarks cards, event cards, and promotional cards that give them points to earn rewards.
Profile
As users collect cards, their rank changes as they level up in points. They can view and share their status with others.
Map
Getting lost is a real worry at a ball game, so a live map is provided on the app to help users find their destinations.
Points
User collect points by collecting cards. Each card is a worth a certain number of points that can be redeemed for rewards from the rewards store.
Rewards
Points are redeemed for items and upgrades at the rewards store, creating incentives for users to play the game.
Using their mobile device, users can collect and trade their cards while earning points to redeem rewards.These cards are fun and educational and they increase the business of the venue through promotional sales on product cards.
User Testing
We interviewed 5 potential users to try out our first version and our results were varied with some good insights on how to continue making improvements for our users.
Key Takeaways
• Cards are a supporting feature to the experience. Most important features such as the feed and way-finding are the core of the application.
Future: Design the framework to support the core features.
• Timing and contextual information is extremely important. Users would not want notification to disturb the game play, but they would want information on how to find their seats.
Future: Design a set of rules, that would inform how the timing of notifications would be most advantageous to the user.
• Users are excited about the cards and would recommend it to friends. It is a differentiation factor.
• Notifications need to respect the pace and rhythm of the sport. Interactions need to be swift and not lengthy operations.
Future: Test the timing of the notifications. Example: For a grand slam what is the appropriate time to notify users and what is this engagement.
Process
Using the Google Design Sprint helped us foster more ideas, by having each person generate ideas about what the application could be. The process helped us compile research, discuss, and review each other's work allowing us to synthesize the ideas into filling in the larger team and product goals.
Moving forward
Using the findings from the user testing will be the next steps in refining the project. With the one week sprint, we gained a lot of momentum in finding our product, but the next phases will require us to think through some of the areas we missed, such as framework and core use of the product.
Another feature that will add a dimension to our project will be the social elements that we have not further defined, such as trading cards with others and expanding the home feed to make information more relevant to the users.
