Mobile solution for players of pickup sports to find games, form meaningful connections, and grow local pickup communities.
Role
UX Designer/Researcher
Duration
Multiple 2 week sprints
Scope
Research, ideation, wireframes, hi-fi designs
Team
Independent
Tools
Figma, Google Docs & Sheets,
In Fall 2022, I began an independent passion project to develop a mobile solution for finding and establishing pickup games (casual sports game like soccer, basketball, or ultimate frisbee).
Highlights of my Project:
Why PickUP?
Playing with Ultimate Frisbee groups for years now, I've experienced the positive impact pickup communities have on not just physical health, but in making social connections. Through these communities I've formed friendships with people of all ages, genders, and backgrounds — people I may never have met otherwise.
This is why I created PickUP,
a platform that fosters connection and helps pickup communities thrive.
Pickup communities lack a dedicated online platform for organizing and announcing pickup games. This limitation leads to decreased attendance and at times, the breakup of pickup groups, depriving players the opportunity for social interaction and exercise.
Specific User Problems:
Easily find nearby pickup games by sport, date, and matchmaking preference.
Assess the feasibility of PickUP as a product by conducting a comprehensive UX process spanning user research to high-fidelity designs.
Conducting user research was crucial to identify players' unique needs and pain points, serving as the building blocks for successful solutions.
What were existing services doing to address the needs of pickup players and communities?
PickUP needed to have a broad reach (inclusive of all sports) and to be of high quality.
Reach
Broad: Supports a variety of sport communities.
Targeted: Specializes in providing for 1 or 2 sport communities.
Quality
High: Great user experience, intuitive, fast performance.
Low: Poor user experience, counterintuitive, buggy.
The audit provided insights into PickUP's direct and indirect competitors:
I surveyed 12 people at a pickup Ultimate frisbee game and asked them the following (quantitative & qualitative) questions:
I interviewed a pickup players to gain deeper insights into their experiences playing in pickup games.
Age: 30
About Linden
Linden plays pickup frisbee once every few months. She plays on an all woman's league most of the year. She also enjoys playing pickleball with her significant other. She has heard about pickup games through friends and family. Rarely if ever does she use apps to find pickup games – maybe has used Facebook in the past.
Challenges:
"I only want to go to pickup with people I know."
I compiled quantitative and qualitative data from my survey into diagrams to draw user insights from.
Key findings:
Participants wanted matchmaking equitability, day-of-game posts to collect RSVPs, and accurate game information online (start times, location, and recent group activity).
With a solid understanding of user needs and pain points, I was ready to ideate potential solutions. I needed to first ask questions based on these insights.
With a solid understanding of user needs and pain points, I was ready to ideate potential solutions. But, I needed to first ask questions based on these insights.
I performed a "How-Might-We?" exercise to ideate how I might address user insights and pain points identified from my research:
1
Features to explore: allowing users to find games/players by sport and date, allow matchmaking based on gender preference, and allow users to create their own pickup groups.
2
Strategy: Implementing connection strategies from dating apps while avoiding being a dating app!
3
Design: Using color and tone to match that core identity of our app – brand work. Use an efficient onboarding flow for users to quickly find a game and reduce user drop-off.
I began sketching potential solutions while asking myself the following questions:
Based on research and exploratory sketches, I developed a user flow
– What process could users take to find a game as quickly as possible?
After opening the app, users would be prompted to sign in, or register an account. Both choices would lead users to finding a game through the same interface.
What makes PickUP different from its competitors? What emotions should PickUP evoke?
I realized that at its core, PickUP should embrace the spirit of pickup games themselves – having fun with other people. To capture this quality, I centered the app's identity around the value of "playfulness", which helped define my choices regarding colors and tone.
I chose 2 vibrant colors that expressed the feeling of playfulness: orange and blue. I wanted the tone to be casual and optimistic, like when your friend tells you about a really great movie they just watched.
With potential solutions identified and a user flow mapped, I was ready to design digital wireframes.
The goal designing wireframes was to incorporate core functions of the app into a UI that followed my user flow, saving the pretty aesthetics for later on.
High-Fidelity iterations (ready for user testing). Including: sign in, onboarding, game/player search, and groups screen.
Key features include: finding a game by sport, profile/chat function, and a clear CTA – "Find now" button.
After wireframing, I prioritized features for future designs. I opted out of adding the map feature, as Google Maps fulfills users' navigation needs and I could simply include a Maps location instead. I refined the group page to focus on essential elements for finding games: start/end time, location, and admins and away from members and group photos.
My new designs incorporated aspects of "playfulness" through its blue primary color and vibrant orange accent color. v1 was about exploring possibilities rather than committing to a specific aesthetic. Additionally, I designed a launch splash image to warmly welcome new and existing users when they opened the app.
With a functioning prototype, I decided to conduct a usability test of 5 participants to observe how users would use the app and identify any problems with the user flow.
User testing insights of PickUP's usability sorted from best to worst. Having all search options (date, sport) on one screen was confusing to users and made it difficult for users to find groups.
By having all search filters in one place users felt overwhelmed rather than convenienced, so I divided the search into a 3 step process.
I also leaned into PickUP's "playful" brand value in this version with "balloons", cloud headers, sky gradients, and a more friendly/encouraging tone.
Reevaluated colors to meet WCAG AA standards.
Onboarding now includes gender matching preferences while preserving efficiency.
PickUP's logo needed to match the playful tone of the app with symbolic imagery of the pickup game experience.
What do you see? A new friend waving to you? A frisbee player jumping to catch a disc? A basketball player about to dunk? Someone reaching up for a balloon?
I designed this animation to appear on app launch to immediately immerse users. (logo since been updated)
A loading animation plays during searches. A blue progress circle "pulled" by alternating sports icons runs in a cycle.
Animations created in Figma & After Effects.
Were changes in my latest designs actually beneficial to users? I conducted another usability study with the same participants to find out.
I conducted user testing with the same 5 participants, yielding promising results.
Overall, participants found the updated version of the app to be more intuitive, especially the divided search flow. They appreciated the guided navigation between selecting a sport and days of the week to find like players and pickup games.
"I love how gender match preference is included in the onboarding process."
Pickup communities need a dedicated online tool to organize regularly scheduled games and call games day of. Women identifying players vastly prefer matching with other women and need tools to find games that respect this need.
Launching to live users, I would soft launch to my area.
Through iteration and user testing, PickUP has proven itself to be a potentially viable product for pickup players and groups. With user research supporting its efficacy and an unexplored market, PickUP has an opportunity for success.
