Girls on the Run
Web Re-design
A UI/UX Project
OVERVIEW
The Problem:
American Time Use Survey, consisting of 112,000 individuals, U.S. residents 15 years and older (from the years 2003-2010) found that females comprised just 28% of all of those who participated in individual sports and 20% of all those in team sports.
How can we make youth sports more accessible to young girls?
The Team:
Anna Yuan, Clair Sun, Hanna Jang
My Role:
Project Management, Design Research, Scenario/Storyboarding, Wire-framing, Prototyping
Tools Used:
Figma, InDesign, InVision
starting with some background research
Secondary Research
We began with doing some secondary research. I dived into researching more about the broader topic of youth sports, while also researching for organizations that were active in the specific domain space of Pittsburgh.
My goal was to find a an organization represented a real, tangible, and urgent need in the youth sports space.
I found this in the unequal representation of organizations dedicated to female-based teams compared to the male-based sports teams in Pittsburgh. In the initial research, I found that there was an unequal number of youth sports communities dedicated to boys compared to girls.
our field research
Guerrilla Research
I was curious to find out more about a possible inequality between males and females, and their experiences with youth sports. To gain more understanding of this problem space, our team went out to do guerrilla research with the wider Pittsburgh community.
We collected data from about 50 participants in our guerrilla research. For our research, the same set of questions was give to both male and female participants. However, we organized the answers of these questions based on the genders of the participants: male or female.
what we discovered
Research Insights
From the research I found that:
1). Compared to our male participants, the female participants felt significantly less encouraged to engage in after school sports: 63.3% compared to 72.47%
2). The difference in the type of sports, between males and females was also prominent. For ex). basketball was one of the most popular choices among males, while it was one of the least popular for females.
Based on this research finding, I established the design question:
How can we encourage a more welcoming environment for girls who might be interested
in sports?
With this question in mind, we found that Girls on the Run (GOTR) was a program that was working in this specific problem space. However, we felt that rebuilding a new online experience could help bridge the accessibility issue these girls were facing.
some user analysis
User Journey Map
In the journey maps, I focused on the users and service provider. I wanted to see if there were any overlap/shared paint points from these two groups.
the stories of our stakeholders
Personas
Given the findings and highlighted points from the Customer Journey Map, I established three personas, Emma Johnson who represents our end users, Amy Torres who represents the perspectives of the business client, and Meg Brown who represents the administrative group.
Emma represented the group of users who we were re-designing the GOTR web experience for. Through her persona, we were able to explore what her everyday life looked like, and make sure the solution we designed was relatable to users like her.
Through Meg, I was able to understand the coach's goals and needs. Specifically, I was able to grasp this specific stakeholder's motivation to mentor girls in a lifestyle change- and not just coach the girls physically. We also wanted to explore how our solution could help motivate volunteers like her to be more active in their involvement with the program.
The business provider persona gave me insight in understanding the business needs and values for GOTR. What were some of the business limitations that could affect the scope of our solution? At the same time, we wanted to make sure that our solution was solving some of the problems the business could be facing.
solution ideation begins
User Scenarios
Based on the information I gained in the research process, I explored different ways that the website could assist customers, service providers, and business owners.
This way, I could visualize the process of how a user might use our design. The team brainstormed together 10 scenarios. Each scenario addressed a specific user need and presented a solution for that particular need.
team-mate brainstorming a scenario on whiteboard
envisioning the ux of out solutions
Storyboarding
Storyboards were created based on the scenarios. Each storyboard contained the context, problem, solution, resolution pattern and feature value points for the customer, service provider, and business owner. This way, visualization of the user experience would be clear.
Additionally, it was crucial to better understand users' motivations and experiences in relation to the problem space.
Scenarios included:
1). How might you engage in sports with no initial experience?
2). If you have concerns with paying for classes, were there cost-effective solutions?
3). If all your friends are uninterested, how might you find a group to do sports with?
4). How might you turn discouragement to motivation to try new activities?
5). How might you be encouraged to step outside of your comfort zone and start a new hobby in exercising?
user needs validation
Speed Dating
The speed dating design method is a tool used to explore how concepts would be used in application to the users specifically. Our team sat down with our users to explore each of our design concepts behind the storyboards. From this exploration, we were able to receive feedback about the need validation and user enactment of our concepts from the users directly. These insights were key in evolving and shaping the our final concept/strategy.
Feedback: Things we got right
1). People were positive towards the idea of having an online community for youth sports.
2). The role of a coach/mentor and celebrity influencers are important for our target customers.
Feedback: Things that we might want to change
1). General concern of information privacy and safety of young members.
2). There may be more ways to keep the website active and motivate the girls to post more.
We incorporated the feedback we received from the speed dating sessions.
The improvements we made included: