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Research
We decided to focus on the topic of active communities and formed a group together on the likeness of our initial ideas. With the initial basic concept focusing on casual 'pickup' sports and how to make it more informative and simple to get into. Pickup sports is the concept of playing an impromptu, casual game of a sport, more often than not, only inviting friends over to play due to it's casual nature and general difficulty in trying to organise a game with strangers.
After conducting a quick search online it was abundantly clear that other apps with a similar or identical concept idea existed. Since we were faced with the issue at the time, that being how would one could exactly secure a venue to play in, we decided to take some inspiration from the already existing apps out there. In Australia however, the current market regarding pickup sporting is unoccupied and so we decided to fill in this unsaturated market with our own spin, mostly inspired by these other concepts.
After conducting deeper research into active communities, we found problem spaces which affect virtual communities out there. According to Vastardis & Yang(2012) , “a mobile network consisting of mobile devices carried by humans is by nature a sparse dynamic environment”, hence making it very simple for communities to seize interaction almost immediately. Designing around this and giving users incentive to keep coming back was one of the key considerations we had to keep in mind. We wanted to make an app which would be user driven and focused, this means that users would take initiative in contacting other users and setting up games. This is because our venues are in the public domain, users could pull out of any game even at the very last moment, disrupting the flow and general usability of the app. Vastardis & yang mention that, “What drives individuals to form communities is social relationships of any form and background. Common interests and family bonds constitute relationships leading to the creation of communities”. So quickly familiarising users with common interests of other users is likely to establish a relationship and as a result potentially kickstart a vibrant community in the future. With the advent of multiple communities comes the possibility of constant scheduled games or matches, meaning that the app should be user driven and sustained.
In saying this Vastardis and Yang also say that “It is the properties of the social network that dictate the behaviour of the users”, hence it can be seen why it is so crucial to implement a system with features which facilitates ease of connection and pushes for a community to be formed within a physical community such as a neighbourhood. This opens up competition and attracts many users who want to for example maintain a high win ratio and keeps people coming back to the app, making it again user driven.
After getting an idea of what our main goals were, we conducted user testing to determine whether these features we thought of were favourable or not. Our user testing included face to face interviews, tasks to complete and surveys to do after the completion of tasks. Each member of the team was responsible for an aspect of the app and worked on it themselves, later on compiling the data retrieved. The design choices were hit or miss here and there but most of the features implemented were favoured by the testers. In case of the user profile, the idea was to implement as many features that would create an easier time facilitating a connection with another user. Such as displaying user's favourite sports or occupation or an area of activity feature, these were meant to show another online user as another human and help identify connection between users however the user data suggested people were not comfortable with displaying these details. This could be due to the fact of user tester base being so tiny for the player profile but we decided to follow the data and removed these features, as can be seen below. Other features such as the king of the court was well received and it again ads a competitive edge to the app, generally in the sporting arena screens the main issue were the design style choices. With the maps API screen users found it hard to distinguish an already started game to one which would be starting soon, users weren't too happy with the icons either and appropriate changes took place. Over all the user testing surprised us in many areas while there were many expected results too, something that we definitely could have improved on however would have been the amount of testers we conducted. Having a larger tester base would have provided better data to work with.
A person who wants to find a game of sport will first open the application on their phone. The user will then log in and be taken to the maps screen. A user will select a game of basketball happening soon (if they want to play basketball) and find out the details of the game. These details will include the court information page, which has the court rating and court description. And the court schedule page which will include all the games that are scheduled to happen on that court that day. The user will then join a game that they want to play at the time they want to play. An hour before the game starts they will get a push notification letting them know the game is starting soon and they should ready up. The user will enter the app and ready up and when all players are ready the game will start. While the game happens nothing happens in the app other than the circle around the icon turns green to indicate that a game is happening now. When the game finishes the users will all input the score of the game and the winners of the game. If a user broke the rules or is lying about the score the rest of the users can report him/her and they will be banned by the application if they are found to be cheating. A user can then rate the court they played on and add the users they played with as friends. The user can then close the application until they want to use it again.
Jung, Y. (2017). Community-Based Localized Disaster Response through Temporary Social Overlay Networks. Mobile Networks and Applications.
McCoy, S. (2017). A better way to organize pickup sports. [online] Stewart McCoy's Product Design Portfolio. Available at: http://stewartmccoy.com/a-better-way-to-organize-pickup-sports/ [Accessed 27 Oct. 2017].
Vastardis, N. and Kun Yang (2013). Mobile Social Networks: Architectures, Social Properties, and Key Research Challenges. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 15(3), pp.1355-1371.