Function
Helping Esports Fans Connect Online and Offline
Duration
10 Weeks
Role
UX Designer
Project Type
Academic, Individual
Tools
Figma, Blender
Function is an iOS mobile application meant to help new Esports fans connect with other Esports fans, both at large scale championship style events and outside of the events to better foster the community aspect.
Secondary Research
Esports in the western world has always taken a backseat to traditional sports. However, when every major sport in the world was forced to pause due to the pandemic, Esports finally had it's chance in the spotlight, as it was able to continue operation within a couple of weeks of the global lockdown orders.
In addition to this, studies have shown that involvement in competitive hobbies offers huge social benefits, with the concept of "serious leisure" being at the centre of that. In a paper by Miia Suitila, they showed that engagment in competitive video games had similar social outcomes as involvement in martial arts, where the communal aspect is central to continuous engagement and enjoyment of the activity.
Given all of this, despite my preconceived notions about what this problem may entail, I needed more information about what new esports fans were experiencing in regards to their fears or blockers preventing them from experiencing live esports.
user interviews
We conducted user interviews with real esports fans to get a sense of what were their overall views and experiences with live esports, and if they had none, what were the reasons that they hadn't gone out and went to a live esports event
Sample Questions
Could you tell me about a memorable live esports experience that you had?
What would you tell someone who was interested in attending their first esports event?
Could you tell me about your most memorable esports memory?
Key Answers
the problem
Newer esports fans do not have the established social connections within esports than older fans do, causing anxiety in relation to feeling excluded and isolated, even when they in an arena full of likeminded esports fans.
Despite more events than ever, attendance has still not surpassed the level of pre-pandemic esports events, and newer esports fans are not attending. This is due to lack of social connection in the space, the convoluted and differing methods of aquiring information and tickets for events, which has led to less overall in person attendance relative to the growth in the space
New esports fans are not attending events for the first time.
persona
Goals
Wants to attend live esports events
Wants to meet people who have the same interests and passions as him
Wants to know how he can be more involved with the broader esports community
League of Legends Player
Watches every match of the LCS & LCK
Has never been to a live esports event due to the pandemic
Doesn’t know anyone who attends live esports events
Has never gotten the change to attend a live esports event
Pain Points
Behaviours
Kevin Murphy
Age 24
Social Media Content Manager
“I think the social aspect is the part that I like the most about going to an esports event.”
How might we enourage new esports fans to more regularly participate and attend live esports events?
Ideation
Given that the problem that I had identified had no current mobile solutions, there were many directions that I could have gone from a design perspective. I sketched out many different options very quickly to narrow my focus on the final application that I would eventually be creating.
From these sketches, I was able to create greyscale wireframes. Looking back, the decisions that were made at this stage of the process may have been misguided due to my frame of reference for potential solutions were built effectively only for desktop, and this would create problem that I had to solve down the line.
Sketching to Prototyping
Sketching
User testing
Improving The Product
Because the UX process is centered around constant improvement and iteration, user testing is a crucial moment within the overall process. For this product, I conducted two rounds of user testing with participants that generally matched the persona I had created through primary and secondary research.
I tested the overall usability with the mid fidelity prototype that I created, and although the results I got were very positive, there may have been issues with my choice of participant being used to products not working correctly in conjunction with them being hyper tech-literate.
Major Learnings
Issues that appeared later within the process surrounding usability did not present themselves had I tested the prototype on a more general audience, so even with the feedback that I received, there was still many revisions that had to happen far later in the process than is preferred.
Despite all of that, I was still able to majorly improve the product, especially in three key areas
Change 1: make the application darkmode
Because the product that I designed is a gaming product, and the people that I tested it on have no reference point for the overall UX process, they were confused as to why it wasn't an application that was natively dark mode. Obviously I could not do this at the medium fidelity phase of the project, but that made overall design decisions later extremely easy from a branding perspective.`
Change 2: never have the user leave the application, even if that is was currently occurs in a real world application.
The world of esports is run largely by the publishers of games and not the owners of the venues were live esports take place, centralized ticket buying is not commonplace within the industry. Despite that, 2 of 5 testers in both rounds were confused as to why the checkout process was not natively integrated within the application, so that was a major deviation that guided much of the final prototype.
Change 3: allow for more outside platform integration
Because so much of the communal aspect of esports takes place online, the major platforms within the space, such as discord and twitch, felt like they were required to be there in order to make this product feel usable in real life.
Key insights
brand identity
Forming a brand identity for FNCTN
Due to the nature of gaming products, other than the overall sense that this would be a dark mode first application, I looked for inspiration within the space to make my user base not feel alienated when using the product.
With themes of community and the overall spirit of the underground at its core, I wanted FNTCN to embody the social, chaotic, underground nature of esports, even as its time in the spotlight has begun.
Our digital solution to community building for esports fans.
prototype
Marketing site
Marketing the product
With the prototype finalized, I then took both that and the overall brand identity that was developed to create a marketing website that would not only show off the product, but give a short introduction to esports to anyone who didn't already have the understanding of why esports as entertainment is worthwhile.
value proposition
Providing ways for fans to connect, both for the fans and the corporations that run the events
The best part of being a fan of anything is sharing that love and passion with like-minded fans. Because not all esports competition happens live in-person, giving ways to the fans to better connect with each other, both inside and outside of events allows them to more seriously engage with your live products.
The connections are waiting to be made
For the first time, all of the attendance information for live esports events will be available and congregated in one platform, allowing for more effective growth planning for future events. More information for your business will always be a huge asset, regardless of domain.
Better understand how to scale your events
Future considerations
The main problem that this product would face is the overall usage cycle from a business perspective. Unless someone is a diehard esports fan, then this application would only be used by a regular user once or twice a year. With that understanding, further developing the overall feature set of the application, and the ecosystem that surrounds it, would be paramount in the long-term success of the product. Some considerations would be:
Would there need to be native twitch integration on their end to better utilize that part of the overall functionality of the application?
How would we build confidence with our users that their personal login information from other platforms will not be compromised?
What would this look like in Asian countries, such as China, where this sort of platform would likely have to be integrated into WeChat or an alternative in order to have success in that market?
Moving forward, additional market research, interviews and user testing would be required to understand and solve the problems that would come as the product grew in size.
Next Steps
Business outcomes
As for the considerations surrounding impact of the product, I thought through and analyzed my product in different future scenarios using the tarot cards of tech.
Given that we would require a fair amount of personal customer information in order for the product to function, there would be massive problems if that data were not properly secured, with massive repercussions surrounding the overall credibility of the application and brand.
Given that esports in the west is not at that scale quite yet, it would mean that our product allowed/helped esports to grow fairly significantly. This is obviously the goal, as we would have tons of users, but would be hugely beneficial for esports as a whole.
Given that esports is fairly niche currently, there are lots of people who would never use the app just due to the overall demographics of esports, so elderly people, especially elderly women, are not part of the general group that we make considerations for when designing a product like this.
