Learning from the fans and identifying issues
Following initial release, I studied reviews and end-of-season surveys to identify issues with the experience. I then put myself in the role of users, testing the app as a fan of specific teams, and noted every negative interaction I could find. This is a critical part of my process – I believe potential issues must be addressed before negatively affecting users.
One example: the fan who missed last week's game would be forced to sift through dozens of unrelated videos to find it, or perform a manual search. Why can't games be easier to find? I remedied this by adding a dedicated tab for all games, including a schedule, plus a dynamic section on the home screen that would display active streams.
Building an experience on par with the top leagues
As the de-facto app for the NLL, users expected it to be on par with the apps for other major leagues. Our initial release wasn't up to snuff, and users felt neglected as a result.
"Our sport isn't big enough for a good app?" – not a direct quote, but the general malaise from users.
To address this, we took a deep dive into other sports apps (NFL, NBA, Premier League, NHL...) and compared features to our NLL app. It became clear to me that, although Lacrosse is a unique sport, the stats and fan experience have a lot in common with football and hockey. Most common features we found in other apps were backed up by our users' requests.
Personalizing the experience for dedicated fans
After improving the core experience, the next step was to personalize the experience for individual fans. Many users felt the app was too generic and didn't allow them to follow their team specifically. I wanted a reward a fan of the Buffalo Bandits for their support and let them dive into everything related to the team. They should be able browse stats or rosters, set their favorite team, and receive notifications on the latest news and scores.
Consistency between platforms
The original iOS and Android apps were developed separately – a necessity due to limited resources and time. This made the experience inconsistent for users between platforms and increased dev efforts. To remedy this, I designed a clean and platform-neutral language, inspired by Material Design and Apple's HIG, which would look consistent on both iOS and Android.
Optimizing purchases
Updating the purchasing flow was a major part of the refresh, and could have been given its own page. The main problem was lack of a credit card option, so adding this was a priority. The updated flow also needed to include subscriptions for the upcoming season. I spent a great deal of time optimizing how the keyboard interacted with the interface so important functions were not obscured.
One thing we learned from the website was that users were dropping off due to an unnecessary step for billing info. This was subsequently removed from the flow in native apps.
Material animations
Styleguide
Retrospective
This is the longest-lasting project I've worked on and I loved having the time and freedom to focus on improving the experience purely for our users. When I can take feedback from real people and use that info to make their experience better, I'm happy.
I do think there are a few things we could have done better. Onboarding was something we planned on implementing, but never quite got around to. It was a serious oversight I'd address in the future. We also discussed implementing tools for analytics and A/B testing, but priorities were shifted to other projects. I really wish we could have followed through on that.
