UX Case Study: World Championship Snooker
Clickable Prototype — World Championship Snooker
The Brief
This brief was a little different to that of all our others, as for this brief we were asked to pick and choose the problem we wanted to solve and would be an entirely solo project. So rather than being provided with a problem to solve, we were asked to design for something we had a passion for and for me this came to me easy.
Ever since moving to Australia, I had felt a disconnect with a sport I enjoy ever so much, with that sport being Snooker. The reason for this disconnect was that televised events were nigh on impossible for me to view so I was unable to view my favourite players in action, but even more surprising to me was the fact there was no actual mobile app dedicated to the sport of Snooker and from memory, this was even the case when I was back in the UK. No application to provide ‘at the fingertip’ information about the sport whether it be post action or forth-coming. To me, that had to change.
So with my mind made, my brief became the following- ‘to create a mobile application for the sport of snooker’
Research
Like with any project and with any delve into the relative unknown, research is always going to to be the first step towards achieving my goals and what better place to start than that of a visit around the World Championship Snookers (the official world body for Snooker) webpage to have a cursory glance at the type of information they provide to their users. Having noted down what I assumed at this stage to be a few key features, I made the following list for the intention of using this list in my next area of research.
- News
- Upcoming Tournaments/Events
- Results of Tournaments/Events
- Player Bios
- World Rankings
- Video Replays
- Live Viewing
Competitive Analysis
Having seen how the website for WCS (World Championship Snooker) operates and the information they portray, next I wanted to find both direct and indirect competitors in the mobile space. Now as I was already aware, there was certainly no direct competition for the WCS in terms of Snooker… not yet anyway. So in thinking slightly outside the box I set about considering mobile apps that provided Snooker information of some sort and considered these my ‘direct competition’ and secondarily considered alternative sports with dedicated apps and considered those my ‘indirect’
Direct Competition:
These came down to the only two apps I could find which in some form or another, provided Snooker information within their app — BBC Sport & Eurosport
Indirect Competition:
Given Snooker was primarily played at an individual level over a number a tournaments throughout the year, I attempted to consider sports who operated similarly. This led me to the following mobile apps — Formula 1, PGA Tour & AFL
So having gotten 5 competitor apps lined up, I thought long and hard as to how best I wanted analyse each app and how they could indeed be compared. At the heart of this project to me was the ability to access information and how easy that was. This led me to consider the previously listed features from the WCS website (see above) to see if these features were included in the competitors apps and if they were, I wanted to analyse how many selections it took from the apps home screen to get to that feature.
This led to the following;
So being able to look at the direct competitors to any WCS app, I can easily tell that the information they display for snooker is limited and when available is buried deep in the app being, on average, 3 selections away.
For the indirect competition, the easiest apps to navigate and utilise were by far the F1 & AFL app. This is reflected in the data collected given that not only was the information each app displayed about their respective sports varied, it was always only ever 1 selection away on average. Putting the key information at the fingertips of the user.
This was powerful information to understand during my discovery and I am sure would come in very useful when solutioning. Although at this stage, that is merely an assumption.
User Interviews
With some analysis under my belt, I set about organising some user interviews so I could understand users pain points and frustrations relating to the topic at hand. With that in mind, I carefully created over 20 questions aligning with the following themes
- Habits For Playing & Watching Sports
- Habits For Playing & Watching Snooker
- Habits For Keeping Up To Date With Sports
I managed to conduct 5 user interviews over the space of 48 hours with spending the next 24 hours compiling the data I had collected, the information provided and set about synthesising the results so I could better understand all that I had been informed.
Affinity Mapping
With my points placed onto the obligatory post-it notes, I attempted a new style of approaching my mapping this time around by way of placing all notes in their user colours surrounding the affinity mapping space and then proceeded to fill the map whilst being able to view all points at all times. It didn’t take long for the mapping to fill and my insights to form.
Users felt they missed opportunities to both follow & watch the sport of snooker
Users wished they could be more immersed with the sport of snooker
It became obvious to me that the insights I had found were intrinsically linked to each other and that they would surely form the basis of my problem statement.
Persona
Before then however, I set about creating a persona based off of the data that had been collated and synthesised so far to create a visual representation of my results and therefore have an easy reference to check back on once I began developing a solution.
Problem Statement
With my affinity mapping and persona all wrapped up, it was time to tackle my problem statement. Something that could sum up all my research so far and something that would fit the persona created. For my personal project, my problem statement was;
“Users lack the ability to stay up to date with the sport of snooker”
With my Discovery & Defining completed, I delved into the Development stage where I would start to solution my research by initially honing in on the features that would be represented in the mobile app I was looking to build through a variety of methods and once completed, I could look to start designing.
Feature Prioritisation
With an idea of the features the app may benefit from housing, I began a couple ideation methods to begin to understand what would help in building the MVP (minimal viable product)
In both methods and by keeping our persona Duncan Edwards in mind, it became clear that there were certain features that should feature above all else as our MVP — features such as Live Viewing and Match Replays. Key items that became clear pain points during the Defining stage.
Now that I had a rough idea of the features I would want to show in this application, I started to turn my mind to navigation…
Card Sorting
One way I could start to visualise the features and how they may sit within the app would be to do a card sort. Starting with an Open Card Sort I moved the varying features around until 4 distinct areas started to take shape. I then created some top level menus and performed a closed card sort to see if I reached any differing conclusions. I wasn’t completely sold on the names within the top level navigation and would lend heavily to user testing in my prototyping to see what worked and what didn’t. My main concern at this stage was with the ‘Video’ section, would that lend itself to both ‘Live’ and ‘Highlight’ viewing.
Prototyping
Next step was to begin putting some of the ideas and the designs onto paper which in turn led to clickable prototypes. In truth, this project was designed solely so our portfolio could have examples of high fidelity work. So for this once off, there was very little user testing performed at the paper prototype stage and I began quite early on putting designs into Figma and starting to create.
I completely understand the need for our portfolios to also show our ability to show a high fidelity product but I will happily admit that it was certainly a longer process for me having not put as much into the paper prototyping stage.
Any mistakes that were highlighted during user testing took a lot longer to rectify rather than the cheap, easy method of drawing through the iterations.
I was still very grateful for the testing performed even at the clickable prototype level as there were many issues highlighted that certainly improved the design. The initial home screen design (pictured above) did not test well with small writing and small buttons and there were many instances across the board where the user testing helped infinitely. After a few days however, the app reached a stage that I was happy to deliver and present.
Clickable Prototype — World Championship Snooker
Please see above a few screens and a link to the clickable prototype for my current solution with regards to the World Championship Snooker app.
Feel free to have a look around and I welcome any feedback, albeit positive or constructive. I can never stop learning.
Further Development
There were so many things I would love to have done with this app given the time, here are just a few ideas ranging from the obvious to the outlandish.
Tournaments & Players
Due to time constraints and focusing on the absolute MVP for our persona, Duncan — the app itself only had the ‘Latest’ and ‘Match Centre’ areas populated in the design. The areas the research pointed me towards was first and foremost being able to offer both live and highlighted viewing. As a result the ‘Tournaments’ section and the ‘Players’ sections were left underpopulated at this stage.
These areas would certainly be crucial next steps in terms of ensuring ‘users having the ability to stay up to date with the sport of snooker’
To develop the ‘Players’ section further again, I had the following idea of…
Follow Your Favourite Players
Setting up a notification system so that you can follow your favourite players and customise the notifications so that you can learn and be informed about varying levels of information whether it be simply a tournament their about to play in to learning if a favourite player of yours hits a century or wins a frame.
Fantasy Snooker League
Lastly, an area I would have loved to have developed further and user tested would have been introducing a Fantasy Snooker League which to my knowledge has never been done but has certainly been successful in other sports such as Football (soccer) AFL and Formula 1.
The actual mechanics I would need to user test for sure but a general idea of having a budget and picking 7 or so players for that annual season and then earning points depending on how they perform in each tournament. Bonus points for being the highest break earner or a number of items that could be included.
I think this would have real legs in terms of bringing users together as they would be able to create leagues among friends and you would have an invested interest to follow ‘your players’ to see how they were doing and in turn, how you were doing.
All very much subject to user testing.
Reflections
Having spent a good two weeks on this project I can certainly reflect on a project I am personally very proud of. I really enjoyed the journey of this project especially given the personal nature and the interest this topic holds.
The current presentable solution certainly isn't without its flaws and would have definitely benefited from further testing as one glaring issue in my eyes was the contrast of the main navigation. The non selected items were very hard to decipher.
Having completed the project I can certainly see the benefits from working within groups and having that team dynamic. Having others around to be able to bounce ideas off and having those extra sets of eyes to be able to spot things I hadn’t would have helped immensely.
But doing the project solo did teach me alot about my own time management. One area I had struggled with in the early projects was leaving too little time to Develop & Deliver and without additional hands to help with this project, I really focused on my time and I felt that was much better for it.
Overall, I was very happy with how this project turned out and I would love to develop this further. The idea of bringing an actual snooker app to market is a very exciting idea indeed.
Thank you very much for reading and as always, any comments or notes will gladly be received. Dont be shy with the claps either! ;)
Meet The Team.
Just me… :)
