Our brief was to design a native sports team management app, working with both the iOS and Android operating systems. Many of the team management apps on the market are either over complicated, or don't have all the features a team needs to keep on top of games and training. I set out to help design an app that covered all bases and was user friendly with an attractive UI.
Branding
User Research
User Flows
Wireframing
Prototyping
Figma
Illustrator
Photoshop
After conducting research on various sports teams, such as football, ice hockey and netball, I tried to understand how players and managers currently manage events and the challenges they face. Some key takeaways were:
"Managing events is hard, and trying to refer back to key information about a game is a nightmare"
"Confirming game availability and location can be a pain when dealing with a big team"
"I'm in multiple sports teams, it's so hard to keep on top of things"
"I miss notifications because our current process is not clear"
Here are some extracts from an interview with Tom Birch. He's a busy team manager stuck using archaic tools to manage his team. In these clips we spoke about setting up events, keeping everyone updated and his expectations for the future.
"I don't have confidence the team is digesting the information"
"3 people didn't show up to the correct location"
"It's so inconvenient for everyone"
Based on this feedback from Tom, I have ascertained that my app will need to have information that is easy to refer back to, clear time/location details and be easily digestible. We need a single source of truth for players and managers.
"It's such a manual process, you have to chase people all the time"
"Lots of different software involved"
"If I could have it all in one place it would really benefit me"
Tom emphasised how difficult and time consuming it was for him to chase players, plus using various software to organise his team. I need my app to have all this information in one place, and streamline the process of managing a lot of people.
This was the first time I'd designed for Android and worked with Google's Material Design, it was interesting to note the differences between that and the Apple iOS. I started designed the account set up and onboarding screens, as there needed to be the option for the user to add a team as an admin, or join an existing team as a member.
Adding events is a simple process, and follows standard design principles so the user should find it relatively straightforward. Based on the feedback from my user research, I've combined all the key information into one place, and given players and managers a single source of truth.
Once logged in, the user needs the most important information easily accessible, such as notifications about upcoming games or training, plus dates and locations of future events.
Some further improvements will be made to help make scheduling clearer and quicker. Any blank day that currently shows as having nothing scheduled will be removed, saving space and saving the user time by not having to scroll through a full week or month. Only upcoming events will be shown, streamlining the whole process.