UX Designer based in Pune, India
Footy
Footy is an app designed to help amateur, non-professional and recreational football teams to find ideal opponent based on the team’s preference. The biggest challenge in designing the app was to understand the decision-making process that goes into deciding an opponent and to turn that decision-making process into a digital interaction.Footy was designed taking inspiration from online dating apps and video games, with a human-centred design approach.
User Research
I conducted qualitative interviews with two amateur footballers to understand:
-
their motivation for playing football
-
how they communicate with their team
-
how they search for opponents to play with
-
how decisions are made within the team
-
the role of social media in for searching opponents and football tournaments
Insights
The key findings from the user interviews revealed:
-
The importance of instant messaging and social media in the football community. The participants mostly used WhatsApp Groups for communication, while Facebook is used to search for local football tournaments.
-
Decisions are mostly made by the team’s captain and every player’s opinions are considered.
-
A rising trend amongst the football teams is to rent five-a-side football grounds.
Persona
Name: Faraaz
Age: 22 Years
Gender: Male
Occupation: Student
Location: Pune, India
Football is essential to Faraaz’s life. He plays football daily to improve his game and is also a part of his college team. He enjoys playing football with different players irrespective of their skill level but most of the time he plays football with his college teammates.
Obstacles Faraaz faces:
-
Lack of networking as he is new to the city.
-
A rising trend amongst the football teams is to rent five-a-side football grounds.
Faraaz's goals and motivations
-
To play football with friends on the weekend.
-
Have teams and opponents available to play against.
-
Communicate with his team and decide to play against new teams.
Faraaz's story
I grew up playing football with my friends in Mumbai and my favourite team is Chelsea FC. After completing my high school in Mumbai I got admission for BBA in a college in Pune.
At college, I trialled for my college's team and got selected. I quickly got acquainted with my new teammates and I started training with them. My college training sessions are highly competitive. I like playing with my college team but at times I feel like we should occasionally play less competitive and less intense games; especially on weekends as we are already training hard throughout the week.
On weekends I prefer to play football with my friends but it is difficult to find a team to play against. Like me, most of my friends come from different cities and know very few people who play football. Because of this reason, many times our football plan gets cancelled.
Customer Journey Map
I created a customer journey to map out how a user and his team would search for an opponent on the app and how they will interact with it.
Wireframes
I created the low-fidelity concepts for primary use and tested it with users. After testing initial concepts and gaining feedback from the users I made minor changes to the design and then proceeded with designing the high-fidelity designs.
Design Solution
Search for local football teams
Footy searches for football teams near you based on your preferences.
Know your opponents
With Footy, you can get to know your opponent's age group, team size, preferred time and ground to play football.
Know your opponent's players
Footy also shows all the players in a team on their team card. It is always great to find a friend or an acquaintance to play against, isn't it?
Recommend an opponent
You can search for an opponent and recommend it to your team. Every player in the team gets to decide on whether to play against an opponent or not.
Invite for a game
Based on your team's decision you will be able to invite a team to play football against.
Chat with your team and your opponents
You can send messages to your opponent to decide on the day, time and venue of the match once your game invite is accepted.
User Testing
I tested my low-fidelity prototypes with a user and proceeded with a high-fidelity prototype after receiving positive feedback from the participant. During testing the high-fidelity prototype I realised the need for more visual feedback elements within the UI. Another observation was the user unable to perceive an affordance within the UI. I reiterated and implemented a progress bar and countdown timer. I also made visual changes to the 'thumbs-up' and 'thumbs-down' buttons to distinguish them from the non-interactable elements on the team cards.