Sport24 is the second most visited sports media in the country. The content character is mostly tabloid. Consequently, the management has initiated an experimental stream of gamification. This case study is a demonstration of how I used my design background in innovation product management.
Challenge
I was engaged in this stream to lead and execute the project from discovery to production.
Objectives
- Increase user engagement per session
- Trigger conversions to registered users
Responsibilities
- Investigate user base in-depth and big data
- Analyse feasible opportunities
- Involve stakeholders in the process
- Ideate and present solutions
Process
Know the Product
Kickoff Workshop
I was a newbie in the news and media domain. For that reason, I had set up a workshop with the product manager of Sport24. I wanted to learn about what the product value is and what the future plans are. We had identified 4 different End-User Profiles (EUP) divided by 4 subsets of JBTB and decided to focus on one EUP which we named The Light Sports Fun.
Decision Drivers
- Current product is a tabloid: Most of the content is literally about sports celebrities and their background rather than sport itself.
- Biggest channel is a tabloid umbrella: The largest tabloid portal in the country delivers around a third of the traffic source.
Analyse Opportunities
While seeing opportunities roughly on the diagram, it was much clearer to propose a timeline.
Decision Making Criteria
- Avoid risky and expensive solutions
- Solve the obvious problems and collect low hanging fruits
- It's a pilot project. So, start small and learn fast.
User Research
I have conducted user research with a set of open-ended questions about:
- A: What is your motivation for the current visit?
- B: What are you looking for?
- C: What would you change on the website?
Here the most useful tool was an on-page form with a single field displayed to a respondent.
Research Analysis
I have been manually reviewing the set of answers looking for
- Dirt — the answers that have zero information
- Insights — the answers that are rich sentences
- Exceptions — the answers that are out of any pattern and assumption
- Gems — exceptional answers that clearly define a pattern or a feature request
- Patterns — Repeating topics
According to insights, I have formed several patterns, and if the reviewed answer contained a mention of the pattern then I made a count for the pattern. At the end I have got a rough idea about problems coverage.
Ideation
Folks in the editorial and digital department had already had some ideas, so I collected their ideas. Then I brainstormed and classified around 40 ideas according to user actions I wanted to stimulate.
Complete journey, Continue to next journey, Make a reaction, Make referral, Return to website
I had organised a meeting with managers where I presented ideas in a mind map printed on a big paper. The reason was to let them read and think aloud.
The next part of the meeting, I gave them pens to make notes on the paper about the most feasible ideas.
In the end, 7 most promising concepts were ready for prototyping.
Summing Up
