PlayyOn Sports Software - Information Architecture

On AngelList, I was approached by the sports platform startup PlayyOn. They were looking to bring on a User Experience Designer to help them pivot from an B2C athlete focused networking platform to a B2B software service. The initial project was to revamp the on-boarding process which was believed to be an area of friction and preventing adoption. I jumped at the opportunity to work with a company aiming to encourage an active lifestyle by making sports participation easier than ever.

RESEARCH

In order to develop a strong understanding of who our target market was in a large, diverse industry, it was imperative to conduct thorough research.

USER INTERVIEWS

Because PlayyOn was an early stage startup, we had to get creative about sourcing interviewees. I conducted 10 user interviews from amateur sports companies or various sizes and sport, by cold-calling local companies and reaching out to experts via Linkedin.

Next, I pushed out a survey via my network, Linkedin groups, Quora, and Craigslist to try to obtain more quantitative data on industry trends and habits.

COMPETITOR ANALYSIS

While waiting for interviewee's to respond and the survey to collect data, I began conducting a competitor analysis and domain research for PlayyOn. This was the most difficult part of the research process. Majority of the competitors forced me to go through a week long sales cycle which included calls and demo before I could find out any information about even the basic functionality. I had to provide tons of personal information and then I had to wait for a sales person to contact me, just to schedule a demo. In most cases, pricing wasn't provided until about a week after the demo was complete.

Going through the frustrating process of trying to compare other sports software, really helped us understand what sports organization managers must go through themselves. Also, this this stood out to us as an area ripe with opportunity for improvement. I hypothesized we would see a lift in conversions if we make it easy for admins to learn about our product, features and pricing with total transparency, on-demand demos, and self-serve on boarding.

DOMAIN RESEARCH

It was also important for me to learn as much as possible about the amateur sports and recreation industry. Dealing with data from minors, online safety for minors, understanding of the Amateur Sports Act (Federal), State and Regional regulations.

Previous version of PlayyOn. This version was too focused on social networking and not of the needs of the Coach or Team Manager. Current users felt they didn't need another "facebook".

KEY FINDINGS

After analyzing the collected data, there were four frequently occurring themes across interviewees and survey responses.

Of those currently using the platform, the feedback was eye opening. Although the visual design was well done, the usability was poor. PlayyOn was more social networking focused and didn't allow for the admin to run their business efficiently through the platform.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Onboarding was not the primary reason for churn, usability, feature discoverability and reliability were the top reasons for customer churn.

• The platform had features that the coaches and admin wanted, but they didn't know because they could not find them.

• The coach was not the necessarily primary decision maker. Most times it was the organization owner or program manager who makes the choice to adopt software. Their focus is on staying organized and efficient.

• Managers didn't just want a team page, they wanted an overarching company page for each of their team's pages to be linked to.

• They wanted to be able to access key tasks in a click or two. This included seeing events and roster information easily.

• Everyone wanted a website that contained all the management tools they needed. Currently they are balancing different tools for websites, registrations and team scheduling.

After analyzing the research data it became very clear that the current information architecture was simply not focused around the needs of managers, and coaches. Primary issues were around usability, feature discoverability, and reliability. The great news was that we had most of the tools the managers needed, they were just difficult to find and use. The research finding and recommendations were presented back to the leadership team. RECOMMENDATIONS

• Shift the primary focus of the project to reorganizing our information architecture (IA).

• Focus on the needs of the Organizers, Managers, and Coaches over the Players and Parents.

• While re-organization of the IA, we should keep the ability to add an organization level top of mind since this was a key pain point.

PLANNING

We decided to move forward with some planning items for the redesign so that together with development we could present what exactly it would entail. We worked on redesigning the site map, multiple user flows all with Coach Charles driving our decisions. Minimizing clicks to accomplish important and frequent tasks was a primary focus.

PERSONA

Creating personas was an important step to create empathy for our customers. It was also a great tool to communicate key research findings to our team.

After, we completed our planning, we worked towards putting together a roadmap with timelines, and presented it to the CEO. After many long discussions regarding the data and key findings, I was given approval to move forward and plan the ideal overall IA redesign.

USER FLOWS

We started with a content audit of the existing features and functionality, figuring out where the major gaps were.

Early stages of user flow audits and re-designs

Newly organized Information Architecture. (Click to zoom)

WIREFRAMES

Paper prototypes were used to brainstorm and for the dev team to consult on feasibility of the design. This was an important step considering we were working towards quickly iterating on our existing product rather than build from scratch.

We went with a dashboard-style design to give Managers one-click access to whatever their task at hand is. The three most important tasks being; teams & player management, scheduling, and registrations. We also wanted to set the foundation for future iterations.

After paper prototypes were validated with peer-to-peer testing and approved from the CTO, we moved forward with wireframes.

One of the biggest challenges was to reorganize the content that already existed and make other features feel united with the new dashboard while knowing that they're would be a gap between the launch of the dashboard and improvements to other parts of the product.

PROTOTYPING

The wireframes provided the CTO with enough information to get started with moving pieces towards the new design, while hi-fidelity prototypes were mocked up for usability testing with current users and sourced potential users.

We worked within the constraint of making the rest of the existing site look cohesive with the new dashboard.

NEXT STEPS

After the release of our first version redesign in October 2016, we saw lift in B2B retention by 3.6% in the first 3 months - and projecting upwards each month - which was extremely exciting for our team considering the changes were mostly usability improvements of the interface. After the release we've discovered even more improvements to the information architecture we could make, that weren't apparent from usability testing. For example, when clicking a registration link in the dashboard, it takes users to the "edit registration" page. However, users check their incoming registrations most frequently, to see how their sales are going so iterations could allow them to link directly to the list of new registrants.

PlayyOn is an extremely fast paced start up environment so we release, test and iterate quickly and often. I look forward to continuing to improve our product for our users.