Girls Got Game
Increasing the fanbase for women's sports
UX Research + UX Design + Creative Direction
Challenge
My media design class assigned us the challenge of tackling any problem of our choosing and creating an application which would provide a solution to our chosen question. We had complete creative freedom and were allowed to follow our own design process as long as we were able to explain our design decisions in the final deliverable.
I was inspired by this open-ended challenge to research a question which I had been interested in for a long time:
How can we increase the fanbase for professional women's sports?
Facts we know:
1. There is a lack of reporting on professional women's sports compared to men's. Women make up 40% of all participants in sports but only get 4% of the sports media coverage.
2. There is an huge disparity in salaries between professional men's and women's sports. The top WNBA salary in 2019 was $127,500 while the highest paid player in the NBA made $40.2 million. In 2019, the National Pro Fastpitch softball league had a salary cap of $175,000 to split amongst their players but teams like Boston Red Sox capped their budget at $227 million.
These issues create the vicious cycle which keeps professional female sports from growing. Lack of revenue from fans means the teams will not get the investment and funding they need to reach their potential in popularity. Realizing this, I thought about alternative ways to think about this problem. I wanted to explore the idea that increasing the younger audience can help grow the fanbase in the long term.
The Process
While I was challenged with a short amount of time, I was able to follow my traditional double diamond framework for this project:
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Discover
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Define
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Develop
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Deliver
Role
UX Research + UX Design + Creative Director
Tools
Adobe XD, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Sketch
Location
Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism
Time Frame
4 weeks
Discover
The first challenge was learning as much as possible about what is currently offered. I know there is a lack of coverage for women's sports from most sports media companies. I wanted to learn how these teams were represented in the media industry and on popular applications.
What kind of coverage do women's sports receive on popular sports media apps?
Market Research
1. Users have to put in more effort to find news about professional women's sports than they would for men's.
(On ESPN's website 0/6 of the displayed sections include female sports)
2. It is even more difficult to find news about collegiate women's athletics. Multiple companies do not have any coverage of these teams at all.
3. While there multiple are sites which only cover men's sports, there is not a single media company which solely covers professional women's athletics.
Competitive Analysis
I also wanted to conduct a competitive analysis and research the designs of some of the most popular media sites. I was looking to learn what made these sites more successful than others, which characteristics enhanced their designs and which inhibited them.
+ Personalized content catered to the user's preference
+ Unique framework to present scores and live updates
+ Profiles and behind-the-scenes coverage unique to each platform
X Articles which were too long to consume quickly
X Presenting statistics in paragraph form rather than having a unique design for numbers
X Making videos and multimedia elements difficult to consume (no autoplay, no zoom on photos)
User Interviews
I got a chance to interview some young women ranging in age from 5th grade through high school. I was looking to learn about their process for consuming sports, their motivations of it and pain points while trying to follow their favorite teams.
"
"
I've always followed sports with dad and brother, but our family does not really follow women's teams. Once I started playing basketball myself I got more into it, but I still feel like it's so much harder to get the news I want [WNBA updates] instead of just your typical sports news
Define
The combination of my research and all my interviews assured me that I should cater my designs towards engaging this audience. I wrote a How Might We question which reflected the focus of my project.
How Might We Question
How might we provide engaging information about female sports to young women so that they can learn more about their favorite athletes and teams?
Develop
Sketches sketches sketches sketches sketches....
My first round of sketches represented my idea to create an application for young female athletes to follow their favorite women's sports teams in their area. My idea was to provide an interactive platform which allowed girls to learn about what professional and collegiate teams were in their area. Using the app they would be able to look up the recent scores for teams they follow, check the schedules and get tickets for the games they wanted to go see, and read profiles about their favorite athletes.
Sketches
Mockups and Usability Testing
After sketching I was able to create some mockups. There were certain elements which I wanted to make sure I included such as a personalization page, individual roster designs, and multimedia elements.
I was able to user test these screens gain some valuable feedback before moving into my prototype.
1. Problems with Selection
Users were confused with design to select sports they were interested in. They wanted an option to select multiple sports, and felt that this design limited them to just one.
2. Busy Designs
Users did not like the roster design and felt there was too much happening on the page. They liked seeing the roster photos and felt like it added a personalization element.
3. Additional Multimedia
Users like the multimedia elements and wanted to see more of them throughout the site.
Screens
Mapping
Users get to see visually which collegiate and professional teams are in their area, or anywhere else they move to on the map
Personalization
Users are able to customize the content they see by entering their area code and finding out which teams they should follow in their area
Team Information
Users get access to each teams schedule, scores, news and profiles to encourage them to continue following and learning more about the teams they are interested in
Player Profiles
Users gain inside access to their favorite player's profiles, catching up with their social media, interviews, and stats
Deliver
High Fidelity Prototype
This application which allows young women to follow their favorite collegiate and professional female teams. They can personalize the content to follow teams in their area and can use the application to learn more about teams they may not have known about before.
It serves as a way to grow the fanbase for these professional sports but more importantly as a way to increase role models for young women. They are able to follow each team's schedule and news which makes them more active consumers. They are also able to learn more about professional athletes similar to themselves, and see what can be possible for them as well.
Key Takeaway
Time Management
I would have loved more time to work on this project. In a perfect world I would have continued iterating on the final design many more times. However, I still learned valuable lessons in time management while I worked to fit in as many steps of my design process as possible. There were a couple times when I combined steps to increase my efficiency; balancing my time between ideating and research, iterating on my sketches many times in one sitting, and user testing multiple screens during the same interview.