Overview
As someone who enjoys playing pickup basketball, I'm often too engrossed in the game to pay attention how I'm doing in the game or how my friends are doing. At the same time, whenever I'm resting on the side as others are playing, there's not much for me to do other than wait. PickUp is an app that amends both of those struggles. PickUp lets players who aren't in the game track the scoring stats of those who are playing.
This project is still ongoing. Keep checking in for updates!
My Roles and Responsibilities
PickUp is a personal project. I am the sole designer and developer for this at the moment. I conducted the user research and did the interaction design, and I plan to code the app as well.
The only device I have on me when I play basketball is my phone, so whatever I was going to design had to work on a mobile form factor.
With limited screen real estate in mind, I had to narrow down what it was that I would be tracking. There are a lot of stats to track during a game, and having all of them would create a cluttered UI and be asking a lot for the user to watch.
Another challenge I had to work with was scope. As an optimistic and imaginative person, it's easy to get carried away during ideation. I challenged myself to rein in my ideas to a simple MVP. I wanted to be able to code this myself so I couldn't get too far out there.
My goals for this project were to:
Surveys
Before doing anything, I wanted to survey some of the people I played with to get an understanding of the demand for this app. My questionnaire was focused around the practicality of an application like this with the option to add their own feedback. Some quotes that stood out were the following:
That would be so cool to see yourself improve like that.
I'd feel like an NBA player.
The cool thing in this case would be accessing previous games and being able to see what your averages are.
Surveys Key Takeaways
With this project, I wanted to ask: How might we design a tool to allow for amateur pickup basketball players to see a progression in their scoring prowess.
With the journey mapped out, I sketched out some rough ideas for potential layouts. In this stage I wanted to be as exploratory as possible, while also trying out styles that would fit within the current display being used.
For the first mid fidelity wireframe, I leaned heavily on the existing design on buses today. I modified the current stop experience, and informed the user on interruptions on their path. I also separated the stop request from the next stop section
The second mid fidelity wireframe, I wanted to explore a similar concept but free from the existing design used on busses today. During my interviews, my participants mentioned they rely heavily on visual indicators to progress on their journey and I wanted to make that the most significant aspect of this iteration and dominate the available space.
With my wireframes set, I conducted a focus group to hear feedback from my prospective users.
Mid Fidelity Wireframes Focus Group
The biggest issue that was raised in my focus group was that the Service Delays section was taking up too much space on the screen and was using a font that was too small to be read from varying distances on the bus. To eliminate that issue, I decided to incorporate the service delays into the same section as the Welcome Message. If there were service delays on the route, they would cycle between the logo and the messages, otherwise only the TTC logo would appear.
Mid Fidelity Wireframes Focus Group Key Takeaways
