INTRODUCTION

The WNBA was created with the purpose of giving women's basketball a platform and elevating it to the same level of respect and recognition as men's basketball. The league aims to provide a competitive, qualified, and equally entertaining basketball experience for fans, while also generating a supportive and loving fan base. However, despite the efforts of the league, women's sports in general are often given less coverage and attention compared to men's sports, which is something that the WNBA is actively trying to change.

Hosting a 24-hour hackathon, the WNBA was looking for cross-functional teams to come up with a way to increase fan engagement and bring in new fans. My team was awarded first place for our solution.

ROLE

UX/UI Designer

TIMELINE

24 hours

THE PROBLEM

We began by analyzing the reasons behind the WNBA's difficulty in building a strong fan base, while the NBA has been successful in creating a massive following and a strong community around the sport.

The WNBA aims to attract young girls and women, but faces the challenge that women are generally less interested in watching sports. This underscores the need to increase female viewership and engagement, which is a critical issue for women's sports, including basketball.

GOAL NUMBER 01

Identify a way to increase viewership and engagement for the league. 

GOAL NUMBER 02

Increase the probability of generating a stronger fanbase. 

GOAL NUMBER 03

Make the experience of watching sports more entertaining and engaging.

THE DISCOVERY

Our project revealed that fans prioritize entertainment over quality in sports, and the WNBA's viewers feel disconnected from exciting moments and highlights, thus the team aimed to incorporate more entertainment in their solutions to appeal to fans' desire for enjoyable and shareable experiences on social media.

OUR SOLUTION

During our exploration of potential solutions, we examined how the WNBA encourages engagement with viewers and discovered "Bet on Women," a platform that enables fans to make predictions on their preferred teams and players to win prizes. We decided to take the gamification aspect that already existed and turn it into an interactive fantasy league that would enhance users' connection with their friends and other fans during games.

Fantasy leagues cultivate a sense of community, promote highlights of the game, and offer friendly competition. Our proposed in-app fantasy league game would allow users to form a team with their friends, view their scores during live games, and strengthen the community surrounding the WNBA as a whole. As a result, it would create stronger fan bases for each of the WNBA teams and highlight superstar players.

SKETCHING THE PROTOTYPE

The proposed in-app fantasy league game should allow users to select a team to support, create a league with friends, create a line-up for each game, receive live updates and leave comments, and view a final ranking among friends based on the performance of their players to encourage friendly competition and drive engagement and entertainment.

HIGH - FIDELITY PROTOTYPE

Our project revealed that fans prioritize entertainment over quality in sports, and the WNBA's viewers feel disconnected from exciting moments and highlights, thus the team aimed to incorporate more entertainment in their solutions to appeal to fans' desire for enjoyable and shareable experiences on social media.

KEY LEARNING 01

How to navigate the design process in a short time by prioritizing important steps and working efficiently with the team, resulting in a successful final product.

KEY LEARNING 02

The experience of developing a solution for the WNBA app helped me improve my UI skills by matching the brand's aesthetic and building upon it, while referring to the existing app and keeping brand elements consistent throughout the prototype.

KEY LEARNING 03

During the ideation process, the lack of resources allowed for creative thinking and meaningful contributions from the cross-functional team, despite having to make speculative design choices without all the necessary information or user research.