Helping student-athletes pursue their dream of playing college sports.
Problem
Getting recruited is a tedious and difficult process for student-athletes. Obstacles throughout this process prevent student-athletes from finding the right school and team for them (schools that are the right fit academically, athletically, and personally). Many end up either not playing sports at the college level or not enjoying where they chose to play.
goal
Design a recruit profile that engages student-athletes, makes it easy for them to share relevant athletic and academic information, and helps them find the right school.
process
Research
User interviews
A series of user interviews and surveys helped us get a better sense of who our users were and what problems they were having.
Competitive Analysis
Evaluating products (ex. CaptainU, LinkedIn) to understand what services were currently offered and how our product could improve on them.
Personas
We created personas, crafted the problem statement above and developed a product vision - the initial project was to create a 'recruiting product for athletes', but the MVP became a 'student-athlete profile'
Ideation
After determining the MVP and learning more about our users, we held a Design studio with a diverse group of people at the company to brainstorm ideas. This was a great way for us to get more people involved early on in the process and generate a number of ideas in a short amount of time. It also helped us leverage the fact that some people in our company played college sports!
Sketching
It was a great team effort to generate so many ideas! I started to create some rough sketches based on the research and discussions we had to this point. It was an iterative process where I tried to generate ideas and get quick feedback from the team.
Wireframes and Initial Testing
With an initial set of wires complete - it was time to show them to student-athletes and recruiters. Our goals were to get a better understanding of what content was most important, how both user types felt about the layout and if the way content was being displayed made sense to people. It was important to test these on both user types because this was something student-athletes were making in order to share with recruiters.
More iterations and testing
After talking with users, I had a much clearer idea of what content was most important and a better sense of how that content could be displayed. For example, coaches liked the idea of having a 'Preferences' section on the profile, but the most helpful and relevant information would be what type of school the athlete preferred (location, major, school size, etc.). I created more wireframes for further testing.
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Final wires and designs
We landed on a final approach for the MVP after testing that included the most important content for both athletes and coaches. We also noted ways to improve the profile going forward (ex. About Me video) and ways to increase engagement (ex. status bar, data visualizations). The mobile view was in mind throughout the process and the page was designed to be fully responsive.
Challenges and Next Steps
This was a fun project to work on and one that I think can truly make a difference in student-athlete's lives. Although I was happy with the final design, some challenges included the timing of the project and technical limitations. This forced us to scope out certain features. In the end, I think this made the profile a bit more streamlined and helped us focus on the most important aspects. The next steps are for us to track metrics and see what athletes are adding and not adding to their profile. I believe improvements can be made to the 'Interests' and 'Stats' section. In addition, we would like to implement ideas that were initially scoped out but could add great value, including an 'About Me' video and coach recommendations.