The Design Process

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The Problem

• When working in "The Battery," a shopping and entertainment hub in Atlanta, I quickly became acclimated to baseball culture and in particular, the Atlanta Braves team and its fans. My initial interest came from needing to know when home games were so that I could leave in enough time to find a parking spot for work.
  
• To do so, I downloaded the Atlanta Braves app which provides users with news and opinion, live scores, the team schedule, player stats, and MLB standings.
  
• While the app does fulfill its purpose with the content mentioned above, it has several usability issues that can be fixed. Given that I was now a loyal user of the app, I decided to redesign it to resolve those issues.
  

Heuristic Analysis

First, I evaluated the existing screens and identified their usability issues which are annotated on the respective screens below. The issues include there being no filter capability, no real-time updates, or a search button which relates to its filtering capability.

Observational Research

While I did not conduct formal user interviews, I did have interactions with Atlanta Braves fans due to the nature of my job and its proximity to the baseball stadium. From these observations, I was able to note a few key things:

• Baseball games are events and a major source of entertainment for fans. This became evident when one game was "rained out." However, some fans, who either didn't want to go home or who wanted to see if the rain would subside, flocked to other restaurants and entertainment venues within "The Battery" to fill this void. From seeing this, I knew it would be of service to provide recommendations for things to do outside of the game within the app.
• Although nothing beats being at the game, watching it on television is the next best thing. I learned this from the many requests to have the channel changed to the game or the eyeballs that were always stuck on it. While the app already provided a box score of the current or latest game, I also wanted to include live video so that users can watch the game wherever they are via their respective cable or digital provider.
• Lastly, revisiting a personal problem which is also shared by many who visit "The Battery" on a gameday is the limited parking.Therefore, information on parking as well as weather, ticket and stadium policies will be included so that the experience for both new and frequent gamegoers can be as seamless as possible.

The Design Process

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Wireframing

Below are the low-fidelity sketches for the app redesign which include the "News," "Calendar," "Game," "Standings," and "Stats" screens.

The Design Process

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Reflections

• While I did not conduct formal user research for this case study, in the future I would love to talk to Atlanta Braves fans to understand more about them as well as have them test out the app to gather their feedback.
  
• In terms of what I would have done differently, I have two particular things in mind. The first being that I would have included notifications that users could opt into to provide live updates about the team as well as information about traffic and the weather.  
  
• The second being that I would have designed for both iPhone and Android devices so that the app could be as widely available as possible.