Research

INTRODUCTION

---

We as individuals decided to focus on the topic of active communities and banded together on the likeness of our initial ideas and established a group. With the basic concept being that, if you are a basketball player and want to find a quick and casual game of ‘pickup’, where do you go to find out where people are playing? Pickup basketball is when someone goes to a court and ‘picks up’ a casual game with players already there. (This is usually played 3 on 3) .

**ACADEMIC/ONLINE RESEARCH **

---

After conducting a quick search online it was abundantly clear to see that other apps existed out there with similar or almost exactly the same idea as us. Since we were facing an issue at the time, that being how would one exactly secure a venue to play in, we decided to take some inspiration from the already existing apps out there. In Australia however, there is currently no app which tries to solve the issue of pick up sport , so there is currently no way to find out where pickup games are being played and where the other basketballers are playing at that moment.

After conducting some deeper research into our active communities filed we found a few problem spaces which affects 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 easy for communities to seize connection 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 last second, disrupting potentially perfect games. 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 familiarizing users with common interests of other users is likely to establish a relationship and hence maybe a community in the future. With the advent of multiple communities comes the possibility of constant scheduled games or matches, meaning the app is very much user driven and sustained.

In saying this Vastardis and Yang also say that “It is the properties of the social network that dictate the behavior 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 neighborhood. 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.

USER RESEARCH

---

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.

USE CONTEXT

---

The general gist of this app is to find pick up sports around an individual and quickly and seamlessly be able to join it. Any human being who is interested in joining sports and being fit can simply make an account on the app and browse the map to find local parks with games happening in them then be able to join that match if there is space or create one of their own by reserving a time slot.