MY ROLE
Working alongside an Interaction Designer, Sunny Lee, I was responsible for research and visual design.
PLATFORM:
iPhoneX, iOS
DURATION:
3 Weeks
DELIVERABLES & METHODS:
Heuristic analysis, Competitive analysis, Screener survey, Contextual Inquiry, In-depth User interviews, Persona development, App adoption strategy, Task scenarios, Formal and guerrilla usability testing, Visual design, Branding
FROM OUR CLIENT…
“We have a 90% fully developed app targeting people that play pool / billiards, and we would love help with a usability assessment and potential redesign prior to launch.”
WHERE WE STARTED
WHERE WE FINISHED
HOW WE GOT THERE
OUR CHALLENGE:
How can we facilitate more enjoyable pool games for all our users while reducing their common pain points? What are the requirements to accomplish this goal as easily and fluidly as possible? How does this translate into optimizing our client's interface and recommending a redesign to fulfill his need for a successful MVP?
THE BUSINESS GOALS
Our client does not currently have a monetization plan but needs a highly usable MVP to establish one. His goal is to develop a user base and gain traction in the pool industry. We focused on usability and adaptability for as wide a user base as possible to help our client gain wide app adoption within the pool playing community.
RESEARCH - DISCOVERY PHASE
Planning my research I decided on the initial areas of exploration and some methods.
Client requested "usability assessment" - would look more like a heuristic analysis.
A competitive analysis - who is our competition and what are they doing?
Screener survey - how to identify our users
Field research - what pool halls should I should visit, why, and when?
In-depth interviews - screener survey deep diving
HEURISTIC ANALYSIS
Our client is very engaged with this project. While we were just getting starting he was continuing development. My heuristic analysis was aimed at illustrating to our client how we were going to approach the redesign process. Going through the app almost felt like a user interview. It was very insightful understanding where our client, an expert pool player himself was coming from and his approach thus far to the problem.
CURRENT SCREENS
Taking a screen by screen approach I explored every element thinking about UX best practices and how the app was assembled.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Lots of intended functionality was present but hadn't been built out.
The gear icon was being used for the users profile information
The main navigation that lived partially in the hamburger menu and on the landing screen would be better served by tab navigation
The Messages and Friends screens appear very similar - investigate a way to combine the two
The self skill assessment for setting up a user profile is vague. There are only 4 skill levels represented by the letters A-D. This system is useful for advanced, knowledgeable users but needs expansion with skill descriptions to be more inclusive of less advanced/knowledgeable players
THE COMPETITION
There's one app called “chalky sticks” which is a direct competitor. It has some similar functionality but also a lot of extra features and is missing some basic ones that would make it more competitive. A couple other sports meetup apps modeled after each other have good functionality but are not billiard specific. All the apps lack a user base. This is something we will revisit later when working on an app adoption strategy for our client.
SCREENING FOR OUR USERS
I designed a survey to screen out players that were likely not our users. This was helpful in gathering some preliminary information about their pain points and to use for deep diving into specific issues if they participated an in-depth interview.
SURVEY LEARNINGS
All players surveyed want to meet new partners to shoot with
Half of the players have a hard time scheduling games
The more skilled players are likely to show up alone at a pool hall looking for a game. The less experienced were not as likely to.
Only one player, a daily shooter, is satisfied with the amount of pool he is currently playing.
Only extremely competitive daily players are willing to travel more than 10 miles for a game
FIELD RESEARCH
Posting on social media wasn't going to yield satisfying results. Our client had given me a list of a few names I could reach out to and I was able to locate a couple serious players through contacts. I needed to get a feel for the Seattle scene, and meet some local players. Sunny our interaction designer and I headed first to Temple Billiards. I was able to have more screeners filled out and conduct some in-depth interviews.
TEMPLE BILLIARDS
PIONEER SQUARE, SEATTLE
A MAJOR DISCOVERY
We discovered the need for our players to identify how seriously they took the game. Sunny and I were a little on the fence about our experiences playing with one guy in particular. After discussing in depth we realized we didn't like playing with him because he was too casual of a player. While different players skill levels are important for matching, we realized our users needed to be able to specify how seriously they take the game for an even better match.
DIFFERENT USERS
At the Golden Fleece I interviewed some league players and some competitive players who play for money. It's a touchy subject and addressing gambling in our app was not in our scope, but it's an issue and exploring it was fruitful. Users will interact with the app however they want to. It's in our best interest to keep all their needs in mind and design an interface that workks for a wide range of players. Keeping it simple yet flexible will benefit as many of our users as possible.
The Golden Fleece
LAKE CITY, SEATTLE
Billiard Hoang
COLUMBIA CITY, SEATTLE
NOT OUR USERS
Delicious Vietnamese food but not our our users. The foreign pool scene in Seattle is limited to here. This is the only place in town where you can shoot 3 ball on tables without pockets. The Vietnamese community is small and they don't need to look anywhere else for a partner to shoot with. We observed that while these guys were really good they liked to casually drink and shoot while still playing competitively. This was a different way than players at the other pool halls we visited played.
IN-DEPTH INTERVIEWS
MAJOR FINDINGS
Players do not often find fulfilling games when showing up alone at pool halls
It's unlikely you will meet players of your skill level at any given time at a pool hall
Players are willing to travel further to play if they know if will be a good game
The atmosphere and table quality is important at pool halls
It's hard to schedule regular games
Players want to play better players to improve
Most players do not want to gamble but some do
There is no standard way to assess one's skill level
AFFINITY MAP CATEGORIES OF FOCUS
Location
Type of play/game
Personal skill assessment
Evaluating other players
Scheduling
Meeting other players
Time issues/constraints
OUR USERS
We wanted to include an app adoption strategy in our client recommendations so the personas we developed fit into this concept. Accommodating for our early adopter in our MVP recommendation was important. The three personas I develop[ed were a categorized mix of all the players I had encountered. While there was commonality between the personas, the way they approached the game, their motivations, and their goals were quite different.
THE PERSONAS
EARLY ADOPTER / EXPERT PLAYER
GOAL
Live off tournament earnings
PAIN POINTS
Lack of competitive games
Distracted players
Casual players
Drinkers
MAJORITY ADOPTER / INTERMEDIATE PLAYER
GOAL
Meet new people, get better at pool, drink beer
PAIN POINTS
Alcohol free pool hals
Competitive players
Getting Sharked
Loosing money
LATE ADOPTER / ADVANCED PLAYER
GOAL
Compete in an APA national singles tournament
PAIN POINTS
Casual players
Unchallenging games
Avoiding money games
Wasting time
RESEARCH INFORMED DESIGN
With sufficient research to inform the interaction design decisions made throughout the app our UI designer, Sunny Lee, created a fully interactive prototype. A selection of his wireframes are included below.
FRICTIONLESS AUTHENTICATION
Multiple interviewees, but primarily our early adopters, mentioned their desire to explore apps before giving up their personal information and committing. They did feel ok though with allowing access to their location as they understood it was necessary to interact with the app as it is intended. Providing multiple ways to login increase the likelihood of new users creating an account.
Users can view local games and see their location based map with a simple reminder to fill out their profile.
When they click to fill out a profile they are prompted to create an account
PROFILE SKILL ASSESMENT
All my research pointed to the difficulty players had evaluating their skill level. We implemented 10 different skill level options each with an easily understandable description.
Beginner skill selection description
Expert skill selection description
DISTANCE & LOCATION
GAMES & COMPETITIVENESS
GAMES LIST
GAME OUTCOMES
Each player I interviewed had a preference for how far they were willing to travel for a game and their favorite spots to shoot.
We wanted to keep this list simple but allowing users to create their own game not available on the list would be a next steps recommendation. Figuring out how users can indicate their level of pool playing seriousness was something my research identified as very important for creating fulfilling game matches.
Players will track all their games here and can easily join, host, or view all their games.
It was important that there wasn't negative feedback built into this feature. There are many different ways people shoot pool so we designed this to reflect that as objectively as possible. We settled on allowing the players to evaluate each others skill, how competitive the play was, who won a majority of the matches, and did the partner show up on time.
INTERACTIVE PROTOTYPE
Built by our Interaction Designer Sunny Lee this prototype can also be viewed in a separate window for maximum effect.
USABILITY TESTING
Getting eyes on our prototype we collected observations re-enforcing our design as well as some that helped work out the kinks. After some guerrilla style testing I organized a more formal usability test over the phone with an expert player and in person with a pool player/developer.
LEARNINGS
Users understood the difference in competitive and casual game play. They thought it was a good way to match players. When asked to define the meanings of the words they all hit on definitions similar to those I had gathered during informal and formal interviews.
Adding Snooker as a game option would round out the games list.
The ability to chat with a player before accepting a game invitation. This was represented by a +Connect button but that was misunderstood as friending so it was changed to a +Message button that tested well.
Skill level descriptions were very helpful. I aggregated different pool players definitions of skill levels I found online. This would be an excellent area for additional study. While it was functional it could use some refining.
“Looks and feels like a totally modern app”
VISUAL DESIGN
Below are a selection of screens and an animated gif of transitions. More information about visual design research and a final style guide is forthcoming.
Loading
Login
Landing
View Available Game
NEXT STEPS
Our deadline was nearing so we started a next steps list for out client.
Mocking up Android design (we focused on iOS but our client wants to design for both platforms)
Community and events section (something we think is important but was beyond our scope)
Rescheduling games button (decrease # of cancelled games due to scheduling issues)
Add multiple players to a game (this would come in handy for setting up tournaments or playing cut-throat)
Badges on outcomes screen (Pairing users based on different skills - would be helpful for opposite skill matching for players looking to improve their skills)
Ability to reserve tables (possible area of exploration)
Tracking analytics via Google Firebase
REFLECTIONS
Deep diving into a subculture can lead you down many rabbit holes. The specific needs of a wide user group can be numerous but finding commonality amongst those users is what helped keep this project manageable. We spent a lot of time discussing how our diferent users would engage with this app. Keeping it useful for all of them was something we kept reminding ourselves of. No matter how our users like to play pool we designed this app to enable them to find fulfilling games of pool.
Given our clients MVP in development and his identification of useful features for solving the problem, we largely operated around streamlining the interface and optimizing the interactions for maximal usability of our users and the success of the app. While I feel this was a good goal for the limited amount of time we spent on this project, it would have been interesting to take a more ground up approach without any notions of the features an app like this should have. Perhaps we would have come to some alternative conclusions about matching pool players for fulfilling games. My research was focused on the specifics of how they currently play pool and find partners. Perhaps my research could have been aimed at a more general understanding of what pool players need to have more fulfilling games. Using that research we could have brainstormed about features to solve those problems rather than the specifics of the features we think will help solve those problems.