About Project.
This project was part of the course IIMT3621: Creativity Business Innovation . Our task was to design a product that would disrupt an existing industry and create a pitch proposal to raise investments from VCs for our venture. We chose the Sports Industry as we found an inherent need for a product that helps users play and train more effectively. The time duration for the project was 3 weeks .
My Role
This was a group project and the team consisted of students from Italy, Argentina and Mainland China. We had to emulate a startup venture thus I took on the role of the Product Designer to define the features of our service and design the UX of the application. While my teammates took on more business oriented roles in the venture such as Operations, Marketing and Finance.
Inspiration
A series of whatsapp chats with friends of mine that illustrates the problem.
Research
Surveys
Surveys were distributed through different social media platforms to get a random sample of our prospective users. Special efforts were made to distribute the survey to sports enthusiasts and sports based whatsapp groups.
Market Research
Research on Sports Facility providers, Sports Adverstisement Industry, Competitors and Government regulations was performed to get a better understanding of the market.
Stakeholder Maps
We made three iterations of the maps to understand exactly which stakeholders we should include as beneficiaries for our application and how we could generate revenue/value from each of them
User Interviews
Informal interviews were held with friends to understand what features would be useful to a person interested in Sports. While email Q/A with 2 facilities helped us assess their needs with regards to the platform.
Analysis
Product Statement
Sporty is a sports based application which matches users based on the type of sport, skill level, and distance. It also provides users with easy access to facilities and events to practice their sport or get rated on their skills.
Our core customers include professional athletes, casual sports players and coaches who wish to use the app for improving their skills and making connections.
Our business model involves advertisements from Sports Goods Firms, Facilities and Event Organisers as we provide them with a targeted market of customers.
The need
Sports are more fun if they involve more people. For most sports, it is necessary to have someone to play with.
However, it is not always easy to find someone . This problem could arise if you are in a new place and you do not know anyone to play with. Maybe your friends do not have the same skillset as you or they are simply not available.
Even if you find someone to play with, it is not always easy to find the right location : What is the closest facility? Where is the best gym?
What about the die-hard fans? There is no way for them to be easily informed about the sport events to be held nearby.
Is there a demand?
Yes. Our team conducted a survey where 60+ respondents showed their interest in the main feature that the app could provide. Our Findings
- 73.8% of the respondents play sports (sport lovers).
Of them, 75.6% had problems finding a partner to play with or against , a problem which highly bothered 64.7% of them. 85.3% would like an app to find people to play sports with and 53% believe that such app would be highly useful.
- Of the 26.2% who do not play any sport,
85.2% admitted that they would be more likely to do sports with other people. 74.1% of them said that they would find an app serving such purpose as useful.
Assuming that the survey is representative of the sport lovers population, we can conclude that on their side there is demand. We believe that if the app would be able to attract enough of such users, the demand for the other stakeholders involved would naturally follow.
Stakeholders
Value Proposition
Competitors and Market Size
This is a global problem bothering billions of sports people. In Hong Kong, 48 % of the residents (i.e. 3.56 million) prefer playing sports with partners but have restricted circles for players matching.
Unfortunately, it is difficult to find a player outside your circle in Hong Kong due to rare existence of player matching services in the market. There are a few websites and Apps available in the U.S. and UK, however, they are far from satisfying in terms of functions offered.
Prototyping
Rough Sketches were drawn to define features of the product and user flows before making the actual designs. This was particularly helpful in visualising how the app might look and coming up with a priority chart for the features.
Designs and Features
Revenue
Feature Priority Chart
This chart serves as a guideline for designing the UX of the platform as it balances the business's revenue needs with the user needs.
The Newsfeed feature opens up at the start of the app as it provides ad revenue however would not be used by the user that often. The same goes for Events which gets its own dedicated page for users to see and book tickets.
The Facilities feature gets its own page and is dsiplayed in the matchup user flow as it provides both revenue and satisfies user needs.
Activity Log and Rating are repeatedly displayed in the news feed, profile and matching screen as they are highly valuable for the user. These features provide Data that is valuable to advertisers, coaches and other institutions thus giving indirect attribution to revenue as well.
The team slide on our pitch deck.
