The Crown League (TCL) came to OpenCrowd to build a spec design for the startup they're building out. They came in with a whitepaper, and some marketing material built out. and a timeline. My goal was to take their business idea and put it in the best position to be successful.
The business idea was to capitalize on what Blockchain technology allows; a decentralized secure record of data and transactions, and utilize it to empower the fantasy football community to own a share of a professionally run team and league. Sharing in the winnings each week, with a community of like-minded fans.
The challenge that I soon realized is that the majority of the user will not be managing the franchises. Typically in a fantasy football league, you are managing the team; drafting players, editing roster, setting line ups. So the question comes up, what exactly could that they do will be of value to them, aside from the possible financial gains? And how can I design tools that will allow them to do those things.
With those two major questions, I sought out to find real people to speak with that could inform me.
I created a list of attributes the audience would need to have for the product to be of value. At this point it is a hypothesis, but it is a good starting point.
The rows in the sheet are logical segments based on the business idea. The columns are data points (based on the market research), my idea of how much benefit it could be, and how long I think it would take me to access them.
I utilized a scoring system that would help me decide who to speak to that would give the most value with the least effort. This was also useful for use in meetings with the client. Similar sheets would be used to score other results.
After speaking with people in those segments, and discussing with the team and the client, we came to see that they fit into 3 main kinds of users based on the jobs they're trying to accomplish.
For each segment I facilitated a workshop to further explore these personas. These exercises helped illustrate to the client the human problem and opportunities we would face. Creating logical connections between the product's features, the business idea and the customer jobs, with the goal of creating product-market fit.
The results were put into logical groups based on what the underlying intent was. Functional, emotional, or social, or buying. Some overlapped, but as long as they did not conflict it was OK.
Tasks were selected that would give a good idea of all the features and functionality needed to accomplish. User journeys were created using cognitive walkthroughs. This helps when building out wireframes, creating IA, and communicating with the client what features may deliver value to users.
From these requirements for the functionality, I created a simplified sitemap. This is a more high level sitemap, than say a full sitemap that lays out all the necessary screens needed for a user to perform the actions. These are organized by user classes, detailing what each user has access to, and when. This is what I show before introducing the detailed sitemap. It makes the detailed sitemap easier to digest.
This sitemap is more for the internal team, development, project managers, etc.
Based on all the previous information detailed wireframes can be created. Mobile wires are created in sync with desktop to help in prioritizing page content. This is a logged in user, content is specific to their franchise.
Every action has a psychological affect on a user. There is a motivation. Here is the system I used to map out these actions. The goal of the gamification is reward engagement, and allow the user to build value and empowers them in the community. The idea is that over time, as users achieved goals, and rewarded for their behavior and contributions to their franchise and league, it would increase their standing in the community. Behaviors that were regressive would impact the user negatively. Loss is a stronger emotion than something not gained. User testing with a larger sample size would be required to validate this, but I felt it would be a great starting point.
The would allow the user to buy/sell franchise tokens, crown league tokens, and give transaction information to the user.
This was an interesting hybrid site, sports, community, and financial. Focusing on their shared customer jobs helped focus the user research
The project currently hangs on getting SEC approval for the trading platform, the client is currently building out the individual franchises, hiring general managers and staff. Their plan is still to launch in the 2020 NFL season.