Debrief
What I learned
Strong User Testing
The most impactful research exercise conducted for this project was user-testing. The ability to sit down and hear athletes problems, we concluded that the Monster Army program itself was really lacking in terms of truly providing value in fostering young amateur athletes.
During this phase we also learned that athlete parents/guardians were a target user that wasn't really understood. We discovered that parents also need guidance and education when navigating amateur sports, so providing robust FAQ's as well as a path to planning and choosing which events matter to an athletes amateur career.
User Surveys
The UX tool that made the most impact was the brand awareness survey. This survey provided data for Athlete managers to build a case for needed resources from upper management to improve the overall quality of the Monster Army Brand.
We also learned that besides overhauling the UI of the web application, there was a huge opportunity to improve the admin workflow and automation. In short, UX principles can be applied to the current administrative process to modernize and improve overall user experience for athletes to get paid faster while freeing up wasted time for athlete managers.
What I would change
Send More time to understanding behaviors of athlete parents. During our research we found that there are some areas of opportunity where we can design a better experience for athlete parents because they have a hand in much of how these young athletes make decisions.
Another area of change I would make has to do with applying UX principles to improve admin workflows. Due to time constraints and collaboration, we were unable to make a strong case to stakeholders why and how improving some of their back-end workflows can provide an overall better user experience for athletes and the organization.
Top Design Constraints
Organizational
We were limited to how much we could affect the admin workflow. Since some of the staff were resistant to change their current process, we had to work with what we had and only affect document workflows up to the point of contention.
Brand Guidelines
A Design constraint that helped save us time was working within a pre-defined style guide that was flexible enough to extend our creative vision.
Technology
We recently added Sketch design application to our tool belt, so there was a small learning to curve to becoming efficient with it. Having this technology constraint expanded our abilities to build more robust design components. Since adopting Sketch, we found it very useful in building our organizations overall design system.
Time
Time is always top priority for any project. So given that we had a time constraint of 8 months to launch for open enrollment 2020, we needed to clearly define requirement for the MVP. Once we understood our objectives we created a project roadmap to communicate to stakeholders and development
