in this personal project I wanted to start with something realistic and a real company; in this way I had constraints that I had to respect. I applied (with the flexibility that each individual case requires) a method, and below, I'll show it to you, along with the reasoning involved.
the famous Portland-born multinational company, has pursued a social initiative, choosing Italy as the test-country from which to begin.
It has offered to take over several run-down public basketball courts, renovate them and make them available to local communities;
with the goal of offering basketball amateurs a great place to play, and young people from the most disadvantaged social classes an alternative to the bad haunts of street life.
Now that the renovation work is almost finished, Nike wants to improve people's experience by providing them with an app to book basketball courts.
This is because local administrations have expressed their difficulty in handling reservations due to their limited resources and IT systems.
On the other hand if they left the courts completely unrestricted, they would quickly return prey to vandalism and decay.
So Nike is asking an Italian UX design agency to solve the problem primarily by creating a booking app, but also by investigating the possibility of including features that could make the experience even more enjoyable and engaging.
Target Users:
People who attend basketball courts.
More info:
The service is, of course, totally free and currently includes 8 basketball courts in Rome, 5 in Naples, 6 in Milan and 2 in Bologna.
I started by writing down possible questions to ask that came to my mind; I grouped them by affinity and selected 10, grouping them by area of inquiry.
I chose to do interviews, instead of questionnaires, because the latter are for counting something you already know; whereas interviews are for investigating more deeply something you may not know.
I then went to a public basketball court, recruited 10 participants, and scheduled the interviews to do on Google Meet.
I recorded the interviews and extracted quotes, which I then grouped by affinity. In this way, recurring patterns or themes emerged from which I was able to gain insights.
You may be wondering why my personas look the way you see in the image below. Well, first, I want to point out a difference that is often not given much consideration, namely: whereas in marketing they use personas to identify the majority, the average consumer; in design we must do exactly the opposite, this means we identify profiles that are at the extremes of the user pool of our interest.
This is because by designing for them, who have sharper problems and needs, we solve the problems and meet the needs of the average user as well and do so more effectively.
for example, ramps on sidewalks are designed primarily for wheelchair users, who certainly do not represent the majority of sidewalk users. But isn't it true that everyone, in different ways and for different reasons benefits from the presence of ramps when needed?
As you can see, I did not connote my personas with demographic characteristics, because I felt that in this case, not only would it not be useful to do so but I would risk enacting biases and prejudices.
People are complex and incoherent, and to use classic personas is to run the risk of stereotyping. therefore, I limited myself to grouping the themes that emerged from the interviews and naming what came out.
I then mapped the user journeys of the 3 personas, putting the respective patterns and quotes into a timeline. In this way I was able to identify moments or phases and most importantly pain points.
I then used the HMW method to ask myself how to solve the problems highlighted.
I tried to answer the HMW questions using the brainwriting technique. But I was alone, so I had to adjust it to the situation.
finally, I made use of a prioritization matrix that would allow me to ideally quantify the impact and feasibility of the individual features I thought of and consequently chose which to include, which to exclude, and which to keep for the future.
I'm working on the prototype and when it's ready I'll take care of testing it.
