About

In 2017 as a part of General Assbemly's final project I had the chance to work with Phenom, an angel-backed startup.

My Role

More core function was that of lead UX Designer responsibile for concept ideation, prototyping, visual design and assisted with research.

Team

2 UX Designers

1 UX Researcher

Duration

3 weeks

Type

Student project

The Challenge

The platform currently limits sharing to status updates and photos. Photos alone cannot sufficiently capture the essence of sports. As such, the next phase of the app is to add video capabilities with rich editing capabilities.

Additionally, we went above and beyond for the client by revamping the "locker" feature, where users add or "tag" the gear they use and love. This feature is central to Phenom's business model and we felt it needed to be a far more compelling experience for users. More on that later.

The Solution

Features

Feed

Feed is the constantly updating list of content in the form of status updates, photos, videos, links, app activity and likes from people that you follow on Phenom.

Moment Selection

The add moment button when selected reveals four different options - users can write a post, share their location, post a photo or video or share music.

Video Capture & Edit

Gamified Locker

While not part of the ask from our client, we felt strongly that we needed to incentivize users better to add/tag the sports equipment they use in the profile or "locker". Simply asking users to do something wasn't enough. We instead looked to leverage a "completeness" meter that is employed by companies like Google, LinkedIn, and Box. We choose terms like "rookie", "varsity" and "all-star" that speak to athletes, encouraging them towards a goal of reaching all-star status.

Research

Market Analysis

Beginning by taking a look at what's out there already, we examined several social platform apps with capture and video editing capabilities. We considered the differences in their content, and how each engaged with their respective communities.

We understood that our solution would need to be fast to access given the dynamic nature of sports.

User Feedback

Our client shared with us volumes of user feedback. This served as a great resource for us to understand what was working, what wasn't, and what was missing from the app. 

 Users were screaming for video. This validation put any questions to rest of whether or not this was something users even wanted. Forward march!

Survey Results

We created a survey to understand which social networks young people were using and to understand why. We asked where they go to find product recommendations for their apparel and gear.

We targeted athletes in high school because we identified them to be the core userbase.

      142 responces: 140 males | 2 females | 11 - 18 years old | 14% were Phenom users

Insights

Users like the ability of saving videos so they can share on other platforms.

Users preferred apps that limited videos length to aprox. 15 seconds.

Not surprisingly, ease of use was cited as the number one reason for choosing apps. 

Whiteboarding

Each designer sketched out a flow. After discussing the differences we eventually landed on combing two versions. 

Wireframes

Testing

Originally users were forced down a funnel in "edit" mode before being allowed to get into "effects" mode. Testing revealed that some users may not want to edit and get straight to posting. We added a secondary menu that allowed users greater freedom to navigate and get to posting faster.