Timeline: 2 weeks
Objective: Create a new app/feature for an existing brand that re-imagines how users consume content on a daily basis
Role(s): Project Manager, Information Architect, Visual Designer
First, we all needed to become experts on the current Seahawk app - more importantly for me, how is the app organized from an information architecture point of view, and how are the brand colors/ typography applied?
After our researcher identified two majority pain points of sports app users, we narrowed in on our how we can make notifications more customizable, and how to cater the content on the app to its users. With this, after a few white-boarding sessions, we collectively landed on the solution of creating an option for fan to create a profile within the app. This profile would address both of the major paint points that were identified: managing notifications, and catering specific content.
Our interaction designer created a low fidelity interactive prototype that she and our researcher were able to test with actual Seahawks fans prior to a home game.
"Landing" Screen
Hamburger Menu Dropdown
High Fidelity - Splash/Loading Screen
Mid Fidelity - Create Account
High Fidelity - Create Account
Mid Fidelity - Customizing Notifications
High Fidelity - Customizing Notifications
Mid Fidelity Wireframes created by Interaction Designer, Ramlah
Takeaways
What I learned from this project will certainly serve me well down the road. It was my first time taking on the role as a project manager, which forced me to become extremely organized with the scope of this project, held accountable by the fact that my team was depending on me. Being a leader is not a role that is new to me, however, I realized I had developed the ability at times when we were very much in the weeds about certain details to take a step back and realign ourselves with our north star and assess our next move.
As the visual designer for this project, I learned how to navigate the relationship with the interaction designer. Naturally, the visual designer's responsibilities come after the research, initial designs, testing, redesigning, and retesting is complete. Therefore, I experienced a certain level of anxiety as we neared closer and closer to our end date for the project, and still hadn't received enough information to get going on the visual designs for the project. So, learning how to communicate this anxiety in a respectful and efficient way was required, both as the visual designer and as the project manager as well.
Furthermore as the visual designer, this was a unique experience where I had to take an existing, very well-established brand fitted with colors and typography, and apply it to an interface. It was critical to become an expert with the Seahawks' brand guidelines, as to not design anything that would follow their brand.
Although my role was not the researcher, I lended a helping hand where I could in the initial phases. We had a unique opportunity to survey and test our very specific users early on in our project. However, many of them had been drinking alcohol prior to attending a home game. We realized very quickly that this effected our research results and certainly made an impact in our designs further down the road. We found that they were just trying to go through our testing as quickly as possible so they could go to the game. Or, they were confused majority of the time, but we were unsure if this was because the design was confusing, or if they were just drunk. Furthermore, since we don't know these participants personally, we don't have the ability to distinguish if they were drunk or if that's how they are when they are sober.
Next steps
If more time was allotted, our next step would be to test our high fidelity interactive prototype. Furthermore, we would then like to test and measure the success of our new feature. We would plan to do this by tracking how many Seahawks fans 1. create a profile for themselves, 2. to what extent do they fill out the profile, and 3. how often do they open open up certain content when it is pushed through as a notification that they customized for themselves.