Helping Soccer Parents Track Their Child’s Development
Treiner
Collected data and uncovered user needs to drive ideation for a web solution.
Project type:
Client project
Duration:
3 week design sprint
Tools:
Mural
Figma
Zoom
Google Suite
Team:
3 UX designers
My Role:
Lead UX/UI Designer
Methods:
User interviews
Stakeholder interviews
Persona development
Affinity mapping
Initial ideation
Wireframing
Prototyping
Project Overview
Treiner is a Melbourne-based startup that provides a premier soccer coaching marketplace service, where players of all skill levels have the opportunity to increase their abilities, learn new skills, and become better players both on and off the field.
The purpose of this project was to look for ways to improve the online experience for customers booking soccer coaches and to encourage them to return to the platform after their training session.
Summary
The Problem
Parents are often the ones finding and booking coaches for their child’s sport development. However, they find it difficult to track their child’s training load and see the full value of coaching sessions as feedback and communication is given through multiple different channels.
The Solution
The solution was a web dashboard that aimed to improve the parent’s experience by providing a centralised space where they can keep track and be engaged with their child’s training progress. The dashboard design allows parents to:
Review coaches' feedback from training sessions.
Easily rebook with coaches.
See an overview of their childs’ training load.
Access to a training video database.
Overall, the dashboard will provide a useful training overview and will make it easy for parents to come back and rebook training sessions.
Keep scrolling to read the full case study
Research approach
The goals for the research process were to:
Test and validate Treiner’s assumptions about their target users.
Understand what motivates customers to book sessions with coaches.
Understand what customers need in order to see value and book with a coach.
Understand the barriers and pain points customers face when looking for and booking sessions with coaches.
FULL CASE STUDY1. Conducting research to empathise and understand the user’s needs
Customer interviews
User interviews were essential. In order to empathise and further understand the motivations and challenges for the customers, we conducted 12 user interviews with both Treiner customers and individuals who either play soccer or have booked coaching sessions. The key findings and insights we uncovered which steered our define stage were:
Parents are primarily the ones finding and booking coaching sessions for their children under 18 years old.
Parents will assess the quality of the first training session to determine whether to continue with a coach.
Informal feedback can be provided in multiple ways (over the phone, emails, in-person, etc.) and is hard to manage.
Scheduling training and tracking progress can be challenging to stay ontop of.
Parents seek out additional coaching, only if training needs for personal development are not being met by clubs/ schools.
Parents rely on feedback from their children regarding how a training session went and whether they found it valuable.
2. Establishing the user’s needs and problems
Persona development
By synthesizing our user interviews into an affinity map, we were able to draw out key goals, motivations and needs and collated these attributes into a primary archetype;
The Aspriational Supporter
The Aspirational Supporter is an involved parent who is committed to supporting and improving their child’s skills in soccer and personal development. They value the quality of training their child will receive.
Goals:
Wants to take their kid’s development to the next level to play professionally.
Find a coach that provides personalised training based on their child’s position.
Wants a coach to work on improving their child’s individual weaknesses.
Wants to see demonstrable results from structured training lessons
Needs:
Technical feedback on their child’s development.
Coach with an understanding of their kids’ specific training needs and goals.
Coach to have a strong working relationship and rapport with their child.
Training exercises they can do themselves for continued learning outside of personal coaching.
By creating a primary archetype it gave us a clearer focus on who we are designing for and lead us to create a “How Might We” statement to help guide our ideation phase.
How might we: Help soccer parents effectively track their child’s development and the technical feedback received from their coaches after training sessions?
3. Ideate - Generating ideas and getting feedback
As a team, we put pen to paper and entered the ideation phase with a focus on brainstorming potential features to help solve the problems and needs of the Aspirational Supporter.
To help us understand whether our solution was meeting the needs of both the user and business we presented our low-fidelity wireframes and sketches to Treiner stakeholders, and also conducted usability testing with 5 participants. By doing so it identified the layout and features we needed to iterate on before creating higher-fidelity wireframes.
4. The solution
Solution goals
When designing the solution we had 3 main goals in mind.
1. To create an easy way for parents to view their child’s progress.
2. Create a simple and direct way for parents to track and manage their child’s training loads.
3. To create a motivational space for continued learning and skill development.
The dashboard
The dashboard acts as a one stop shop for parents and players to track progress, manage training activities and access additional training materials. Key features of the dashboard include:
Clear overview of the player’s training using the 4 corners model (soccer coaching model).
Upcoming sessions and calendar view to help visually see their training loads and plan their schedule.
Access to written feedback from coaches after a training session.
Access to training videos to add additional value and quality of service to players, whilst encouraging them to return to the platform.
Technical feedback form
Key features:
Clear overview of the coaching session using the four corners model.
Provide feedback regarding strengths, improvements, and recommendations from the coach.
Access to a training video from the video database which corresponds with the improvements and recommendations made by the coach in the form.
Training video database
The aim of the training video database is to incentivise players to return to the platform. Key features include:
Being accessible through the dashboard.
Having videos that will be sorted by categories to help players find skill-based videos easily.
Being able to unlock and access videos based on booking and completing training sessions through the website.
Having limited access/ a lock feature to show potential videos which can be unlocked to incentivise players to return and rebook with coaches to unlock them.
5. Conclusion
Impact of the solution on the business and users
After the 3-week sprint and weekly client check-in meetings, we presented our final design wireframes to Treiner. We also provided them with a summary of our research findings, annotated wireframes and our recommendations on the next steps to help them further improve and implement the solution. Treiner was happy with the solution we provided and is currently looking at the next steps we provided them. As a team, we were satisfied with the solution we designed as we believe it met both the business and users’ goals.
Recommendations and next steps
As a team, we were able to achieve a lot, although to make the launch of the solution a success it will need to go beyond the 3-week-sprint. We left Treiner with our recommendations on the next steps to help them implement the solution effectively. The next steps included:
Working with coaches to streamline the technical feedback form to ensure it’s manageable for the coaches to fill out whilst still providing quality feedback to players - We expressed to Treiner the importance of this to determine the success of the solution.
Conducting further usability testing on parents, players, and coaches with the new flow/ pages, and iterating the designs based on feedback.
Conducting research and usability testing to ensure the training videos are appropriate for all skill levels and ages and provide enough value to drive action.
Incorporating additional input fields in the current registration form to correspond with the information needed on the dashboard (ie. are they booking coaches for themselves or someone else).
6. Reflection and my key takeaways
Balance user needs with business goals. Often the client will have a clear idea of what the project should entail, however, this doesn’t always align with the users’ needs. By conducting research we were able to make suggestions to the client about their customers’ needs and what should be included in the solution. Once understanding both sides’ goals and needs we were able to find similarities and guide the project in a direction that met in the middle.
Trust the process! Certain stages of the design process can feel daunting, however, with a proactive approach, you can overcome the speedbumps along the way. It’s important to trust that your research and users will help guide your solution.
Test early. Test frequently! Testing your ideas and designs is the only way to validate them. Looking back I believe we should’ve factored in more time and tested our solution earlier as this would’ve helped us validate our designs and given us time to iterate on them within the timeframe.
Communication is the key to success! It’s crucial to constantly communicate with your team members and client throughout the process. This will allow for greater insights, an understanding of what is achievable in the timeframe, and help ensure everyone is on the same path to achieve the best possible result.