Client request for mobile app | Jon Gough

Project info

Role: UX Developer
Company: OptaPro
Duration: April 2018 - August 2018
Status: Launched 🚀

Overview

OptaPro acquired Scout7 in 2017 who they'd partnered with for a number of years providing market-leading data and technology to football clubs cross the world.

Offering a suite of products for its clients ranging from being able to maintain shortlists on players to being able view/edit and create playlists of video clips of players to share with others at their club.

The problem

There is a fully functioning web application online that is feature rich and ready to use but is only compatible with desktop/laptop screen sizes.

A number of the scouts wanted a more compact version when on the go as they may not always have access to their laptop to view the information.

User needs

User need 1

To be able to view information on a player

User need 2

To be able to view information on a team

User need 3

To be able to view previous scout reports

User need 4

View match information

User need 5

Enter a note on a player/team/match

User need 6

Create a match report

Research

Working alongside the companies club liaison staff we were able to reach out current users of the desktop version of the products and conducted interviews and card sorting sessions to help uncover the user's mental models when using the products and helped us prioritise what needed to go into the initial release of the app.

We spoke to 21 scouts from 8 clubs all across Europe.

Information architecture

Being able to draw of the same data sources as the web version the information architecture wasn't an issue with this project.

Finding the solution

Prototyping

Once the initial research was conducted we mocked up examples of the feature for the MVP release initially as a rough prototype we tested with a few clients in the office and then improved the designs to high fidelity experience prototypes we could share via Adobe XD as well.

Validating designs

We then took these designs to a selection of the 21 scouts to see if it was fit for purpose, feedback helped us improve on the designs to allow for less clicks to get to certain information and reduce the amount of scrolling on some pages as well.

From there we continued to iterate the designs and retesting up until the release date.

Conclusions

This was my first mobile based project where the design was specifically for a mobile application.

It was refreshing to be able to develop something the users had specifically asked for rather than just based on the business's idea of what their users want but due to the timeframe given to get the first release out we weren't able to do as much with the users as I'd have liked.

Due to technical constraints not all of the user needs were met with the initial release but plans were made to include them in future iterations of the app.

With more time I’d have liked to be more involved in the user research and also be able to test with a larger number of users but further iterations have been made since based on feedback of scouts actually using the app.

hello@jongough.co.uk

Feel free to get in touch, always happy to discuss new opportunities, work etc.