Team: Nick, Joshua, Danilo, and me
My Role: Lead Designer and Lead Researcher
Timeline: 3 week sprint
At A Glance
DVLP was a client project that was assigned to me in which the app was redesigned to address the needs of basketball players needing personalized training plans within 3 weeks. My team had to make iteration of the app because the onboarding processes had issues and there weren’t any paid users. We collaborated with Michael, who is the developer that built DVLP, to make sure that the designs my team made work with his stacks. I was one of the UX designers and UX researchers.
What is the DVLP app?
DVLP, founded by Coach Chevy in 2020, is a comprehensive basketball training platform designed to provide elite level coaching for all athletes regardless of their resources or background.
Team Huddle: Collaborating with Stakeholders
In the initial meeting with Coach Chevy, my team reconfirmed with her on what the current issue with the DVLP is, which is the onboarding process not being user friendly as the issue with not having paid users. As time went on, there was a potential copyright issue that was first discussed with the team before addressing it to the client. I made sure to look up the rules when it comes to copyright issues, especially with ESPN. When we brought the issue to Chevy, we made sure to provide temporary solutions as well as reasoning as to why the team collectively thought that it could cause issues in the long run. She was very understanding and appreciated that we brought it up to her.
We met with Michael, the developer, to understand what stacks he uses so that it would be easier for when we do the wireframes. After learning what stacks he uses, I looked up what they were since I didn’t know what they are or what the capabilities are.
Analyzing the current experience
I downloaded the current DVLP app on my phone to see the strengths and weaknesses of the app.
One good thing about the current DVLP app is that drills for each of the skills are comprehensive and include video examples.
In terms of major issues, the skill assessment questions were very long and some of my team members got an error message saying that they needed to submit the assessment in order to move on to the next page. In addition to that they had to redo the assessment. When I did the usability test for my interviewees half of them ran in the same issues my team members did.
Another issue was some of the videos used in the drills and the motivational video potentially included a copyrighted issue which will be discussed more in the collaborating with stakeholders section.
After looking at the strengths and weaknesses, we came up with 10 different ways to address where there will be improvements:
Visibility of system status
Match between the system and the real world
User control and freedom
Consistency and standards
Error prevention
Recognition rather than recall
Flexibility and efficiency of use
Aesthetic and minimalist design
Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors
Help and documentation
If you want a more thorough dive into the heuristics, you can find them here.
Who’s in the game: knowing our competitors and users
Competitive & Comparative Analysis
Competitive & Comparative analysis was done to see how other apps compare to DVLP. DVLP excels in having personalized training plans for athletes, but its competitors offer extensive gamification features and easier onboarding process. DVLP was used as a baseline to its competitors. They are Ballogy and Homecourt. The insights we got from doing the analysis allowed my team and I to see the strengths and areas for growth. Here is a link to the comp. analysis.
User Interviews -> Affinity Maps
As a former basketball player, coming up with interview questions came easy as I based the questions on the players history with basketball, skill level, and if they had any prior experiences in using apps to improve skills. After doing a design studio with my team I ended up making 4/9 questions. If you want to see the whole affinity map, click here.
I interviewed 4 interviewees that were either current basketball players or played basketball casually. There were 4 distinct themes that arose from the user interviews:
Training with other people
Training with alone to focus on individual skills
Focus on specific training when doing drills
Learning from watching other experienced players.
Who’s in the game: knowing our competitors and users
Who’s Monique?
To synthesize the research that was done, a persona was made. The persona included a user’s frustrations, needs, and goals which helped me empathize with them. From there, the problem became clear, “Monique, a dedicated 17 year old basketball player, is seeking an enhanced system to track and analyze her practice sessions because she currently finds it challenging to objectify specific areas of her game that need improvement. She wants a more interactive and personalized training experience that incorporates professional feedback, as she works on her skills to an elite level with aspirations to play in the WNBA.”
Who’s in the game: knowing our competitors and users
MoSCoW Analysis
We had to categorize the features that we want to have especially since there is a time constraint. The features were categorized in either must haves, should haves, could haves, or won’t have. Each team member individually came up with their own list and then met with the group to do a design studio. I started presenting my features first and then by the time we were done, we realized we had some overlapping ones and we had ones that we put in different categories from each other. Through that we were able to have a better MoSCow than if one person did it.
Sketches
I made sketches of what the profile page could look like based on the features that were discussed in the MoSCoW analysis.
Who’s in the game: knowing our competitors and users
The Final Prototype
Following the MoSCoW analysis, we had features that we were going to prioritize. We moved on to the sketching phase to see how we can visualize them.
Once we were done sketching, we transitioned to the wire-framing phase to bring them to life. The sketches helped us in determining how we wanted the layouts to look. We put our sketches into digital wireframes to ensure an intuitive experience for book club moderators.
I made the wireframes for the calendar on the profile page. I started with lo-fidelity and then moved onto hi-fidelity.
Usability Test
We sent the wireframes to Michael and he asked valuable questions on if the calendar was a heat map and how the notifications were being triggered. He also said he liked the designs.
Prototype walkthrough: Monique’s Experience
Finally we have a functional prototype that showcases Monique’s journey when she uses the app. Link to the prototype is here.
Reflections
In this project, I worked with a real client with my team. That was a formative experience for me. It was my first time navigating dynamics of internal and external collaboration communication. I learned how important it is to stay flexible, open, and aligned throughout the whole process.
I felt that I improved my skills as a researcher and a designer by the time I presented the project to my client. I also improved my presenting skills.
Overall, this project reiterated the importance of people relationships, and shared vision to me.