Levelling the Playing Field in Team Sports
Substitute
Substitute is an independent project that aims to solve a problem that I myself, and many others have encountered when playing team sports. It is a social networking app which encourages people to connect through sport, and is a tool for teams and leagues to fill open positions for upcoming matches.
My Role
Experience Strategy, Visual Design, Branding & Interaction Design
Timeline
Ongoing (12 weeks initial)
Problem Statement
Cancellations by members of sports teams due to scheduling conflicts are more common than ever in today's busy society, and teams need a simple, fast and efficient way to fill their numbers when left without a full squad.
Hypothesis
Providing a dedicated space for people who participate in team sports or have an interest in playing will significantly improve chances to find last minute players, while also giving users who have an interest in joining team sports an avenue to locate games and leagues in their local area.
Background
Why
In a world still struggling to regain normalcy after COVID-19, and after team sports were forced to shut down for a significant period of time, a tool facilitating team organisation is needed now more than ever to bring people back to playing the sport they love, as well as giving newcomers a modern solution to introduce them to these types of sports.
Business Opportunities
Not only can this be valuable to anyone who plays or wants to play team sports, but it also opens up new opportunities for the sports industry, especially at the grassroots level.
More new players
Potential increase in paying members
Teams and squads consistently attending
Less cancellations
High volume of new players
Increase of sports equipment and apparel sales
Research
Firstly, I looked up demographics regarding sports and physical activity participation in Australia (pre-pandemic).
89%
of Australian adults participate in some kind of sport/physical activity.
24%
of Australian adults participate in team sports.
94%
The 18-24 year age bracket has the highest participation rate of 94%. (Not including school related sports).
32%
of people who play team sports played football/soccer. Making it the more popular sport, followed by Basketball, AFL, Netball and Cricket.
As only 24% of adults participate in team sports, I felt it would be suitable to interview people who participate in solo activity to discover the reasons they choose solo activity over team sports. Creating a product that also caters to newcomers and addresses any potential hesitations could dramatically improve chances of filling up squad numbers.
My questions focused on:
- Why they enjoy the sport(s) they play
- Their rate of participation
- Their motivations when it comes to playing the sport(s) they play
- Challenges and issues they encounter when playing team sports
- Their methods in organising the next fixture
- Their feelings about an application that facilitates the team sports experience
And for the group that participate in only solo physical activity:
- Why they opt for solo exercise as opposed to team sports
- Their history and relationship with team sports
- What would motivate them to play team sports
- Their feelings about an application that facilitates the team sports experience
Insights
People enjoy the social aspect of playing a team sport.
Absences are very common, caused mostly from other commitments and injuries or illness.
Mobile apps such as Messenger and WhatsApp are used to organise matches.
Finding a replacement squad member is often very last minute with little success rate.
The main worry newcomers have is that they aren’t good enough in terms of skill level.
Established teams don’t care about skill level if it means having a full squad.
From my research it felt necessary to design the product with at least 2 personas in mind. The person who is already part of a team and the person who is interested in joining a team. Creating a symbiotic community of the two would significantly increase the likelihood of solving the problem at hand.
Affinity Maps
Part of a team
Interested in joining a team
One of the insights from the user interviews showed that newcomers are mostly worried about the difference in skill level between them and the players in an established team. However, I found teams don’t much care about skill level as long as they have a full squad of players. Being able to communicate this message across to newcomers will be essential to creating a successful product.
Current Player Persona
- Communicate with the team more effectively
- Be more organised when it comes to team management
- Wants to have a full squad regularly
- Wants to avoid injury as much as possible
- Increase fitness and endurance
- Unorganized
- Little time management
- Drop outs
- Zero to little game planning
- Injuries
- No one wants to play the less desirable positions
- Overexertion
- Don’t have enough contacts to fill squad numbers
- Not enough time to prep team before match
- Little knowledge about fitness and rehabilitation
Newcomer Persona
- Find sports venues in the local area
- Increase skill level
- Find friends who already play team sports
- Join a team permanently eventually
- Increase fitness and endurance
- Lack of skill
- Nervous about meeting new people
- Worried people will judge them
- Worried they won’t gel with the team
- Lack of fitness
- Busy schedule
- Lack of game experience
- Not enough friends interested to start new team
Concept
Touchpoints
Information Architecture
As discovered in my user interviews, apps including Facebook and WhatsApp are used for team communication and organisation. With this in mind I chose to structure the IA of the app to reflect these apps, to allow for a faster learning curve.
Sketches
When drafting wireframes, a driving factor was the issue of time constraints teams face, often having to find substitute players with little to no notice. This meant that in designing the interface, I needed to ensure users were able to complete tasks quickly and easily, such as sending a ‘request to play’. The Home Screen widgets were designed to display the most significant match information, allowing players to avoid navigating back and forth from the Home Screen and games in order to decide whether or not to join a match.
Wireframes
Rating System
A user rating system is an important inclusion in apps that rely on user participation, such as Uber or food delivery services. As shown in the user interview phase, lack of skill level was a main concern for newcomers, and so rating based on skill level could serve to deter newer players. Instead I chose to focus on player reliability, which holds players accountable when they commit to a game and allows anyone to display a high rating regardless of skill level.
Design /
Visual System
Colours
Light Mode
Dark Mode
Typography
Iconography
Design /
Key Flows
Below are some of the flows I feel would be important for both personas based on my research. Further research and testing will most likely reveal more uses and features.
Onboarding
Visible once opening the app for the first time post installing. The onboarding experience gives the user a rundown of what the app is, what the user can do, and gives reassurance to any newcomers by explaining the non-competitive nature of the app and the rating system.
Request to Play
The home screen acts as a feed for matches you can join, giving you the option to sort by location and time, as well as filtering by sport. Accessing a match screen will show the match details as well as the option to request to join.
Create Match
Create a match straight from the home screen. Input match details, add friends to the match and set-up your team’s formation. You can then choose to have the match private or public, which determines whether non-contacts can request to join your team. If a match is public, you can also choose what player ‘Skill Level’ you require for your team.
Accept Request
As the match organiser, you will receive ‘Player Requests’ (if match is public). Once a user has requested to play in your match, you will receive a push notification which when tapped will direct you to your Substitute notification screen, where you can accept or deny the users request.
Player Attendance
As the match organiser, you will receive a ‘Player Attendance’ notification one hour after the match has ended. Here you will submit your team’s attendance, which will then update their reliability ratings.
Testing
I conducted moderated usability testing remotely, with each candidate testing the user flow scenarios as listed above.
Key Learnings
If you’re not going to say anything nice… best not to say anything.
A feature that was questioned was the player rating system. As the current system is to rate players by reliability, a few suggestions were made to be able to rate by match performance. Although my concerns about alienating new players was at the forefront of my decision making, a potential solution would be to have a self-evaluation of ability in addition to the reliability rating system, where players can label themselves as beginner, intermediate or skilled in a sport to allow teams to filter by ability or understand more about the player.
Users found the interface familiar and easy to use.
As this is an entirely new platform, I believe trying to reinvent the wheel can be problematic when it comes to user retention. By using similar mental models as Facebook and Twitter and other popular, widely used interfaces, the functional elements are intuitive to users and could help with user retention.
The requesting and approval of potential players should be as efficient as possible.
Users found the scenario of requesting to join a match very quick, which is essential as time is often of the essence when it comes to filling last minute gaps in the team.
Outcome
Deliverables
Designed and prototyped screens illustrating the concept of creating call to actions and joining games in the sports space.
Values
Trying a new hobby and meeting new people can be daunting for most. By providing transparency for newcomers and alleviating any expectations in terms of skill level, Substitute can offer a pressure free environment to a pastime they might have once considered too intimidating to try.
We can help people create strong social bonds through joining a team or club, possibly adding positive role models into their social circles.
Providing everyone with an effective gateway into team sports, especially for newcomers, can potentially add a whole other avenue into their fitness regimes. Higher likelihood of increasing rate of physical activity and continuing physical activity long term.
While all physical activity provides significant mental health benefits, team-based sport can provide stronger outcomes including improved resilience and mental health outcomes across the course of life.
Takeaways
This project highlighted the importance of usability and accessibility. Being that a primary function of the app was to encourage and welcome newcomers, if the app itself had a learning curve or was difficult to use it would have created another barrier to deter apprehensive players. Efficiency and an intuitive interface were a significant consideration when designing user flows.
This also helped address the time sensitivity issue of teams searching for last minute players. Streamlining the process and reducing the amount of work required by users to accomplish a task drove the design process.
I also gained significant insight in the importance of having a fully thought out and cohesive design system in place before getting to work on designing high fidelity screens. As this was my first project where I designed both a light and a dark mode, this required a much more expanded design system. Being able to edit fully established assets to perfect colour balance and readability within both modes saved a significant amount of time in the design phase.
Future Roadmap
Future Research
The functionality of finding last minute players was the primary focus for this project at this point. However, there are some concepts and features I would like to research and explore for a later update.
Suggested Players
This is a feature that was requested in user feedback. For instances where match organisers want to pick and choose who they want to join their team, they would be able to access a ‘Players’ screen, giving them a list of available players that could join their team in an upcoming match.
Parents as Proxy
When researching demographics, a key insight I discovered was that only 42% of children participated in some form of organised sport or physical activity outside of school hours. Giving parents the option to find local clubs/teams in their area for their children could introduce a whole new demographic to the app and increase engagement.
Tutorial Videos
Training videos can be an effective way to provide any newcomers with foundational skills and knowledge of the sport they want to try, giving them confidence when playing a game for the first time.
Club Profiles
If proven in demand, including an option for clubs to have dedicated profiles could have a number of benefits. It could include mods that enable them to schedule and invite all players, while also giving them a streamlined method of communication for team fixtures and announcements, removing the need for multiple alternative social media platforms.
Last Minute Alerts
If the squad gap hasn’t been filled, the match organiser can have the option to send out an alert to Substitute users in the vicinity of the match venue - the alert being a push notification which directs any interested parties to the match page and allows them to request to join that particular game.
