Yahoo! Sports
Timeframe
Jan. - Apr. 2018
Verizon/Oath
Client/Sponsor
Team
Bicheng Xu
Nalin Bhatia
George Lu
Zhengkuan Yan
Role/Skills
User Research Lead
Ideation
Wireframing
Usability Testing
UI Design
Overview
This is a three-month research and design project where I worked in a group of five for our client Verizon via UMSI Design Clinic. Given that 84% of likely cord-cutters consider themselves sports fans, the overall trend towards mobile usage, and Verizon’s desire to grow their audience on their sports platforms, we conducted in-depth user research to explore sports fans’ behaviors and motivations for following their favorite teams as well as to identify a missing demographic. Based on the research insights, we designed key features that focus on team affinity factors to attract this demographic and to increase user engagement for both new and current users on Yahoo! Sports mobile platform.
How might we -
use team affinity factors to grow engagement of young audiences on mobile sports platforms?
Final Design Concept Overview
Design Concept 1:
Team Popularity Rankings
Sports fans can be more engaged and connected with their favorite teams by earning points to increase the team’s popularity. Team Popularity points are earned by users’ engagement on the platform.
Users can access team leaderboard from the homepage. Leaderboards are grouped by both by sports type and divisions
The ranking updates daily and each team is compared to the previous day to provoke user contributions to their favorite teams.
The accumulated points of each team on the leaderboard resets every month
Team Leaderboard
Homepage
Level Up Rules
Design Concept 2:
Team Popularity Rankings
A community for sports fans to compare and compete with each other. Fan loyalty points are earned by users’ engagement on the platform. Users can find more details about how to earn more points in the level up page.
Homepage
Team Page
Fan Leaderboard
Design Concept 3:
User Profile
Users can show their “Sports Identity” and discover other sports fans who share similar sports interests on the platform.
Users can view other sports fans' identity based on the major team affinity factors: College, Current Location and Hometown
Users can get a better sense of this sports fan based on his comments and activities on the platform
Display achievement to give sports fan the recognition of how devoted they are for their teams and the sense of pride
Fan Leaderboard
User Profile
User Profile (Scroll Down)
Design Concept 4:
Game Centric Social Interaction
Users can share their thoughts and feelings among the audience who are using Yahoo Sports to watch a live game at the same time.
Watch Live Game
Watch Live Game (Full Screen)
Users can choose to turn the live comments off
Users who have more Fan Loyalty Points will have highlights on the comments to demonstrate their devoted fans status
