Building a Platform for Recreational Sports
UX Research for recreational tennis mobile app
Background
Tennis Hero is a startup seeking to improve the experience of playing recreational tennis in a major city. I was brought on when the team had a basic version of an app that they needed to be improved for market.
Goal: Identify opportunities for design improvements, to support launch of a Beta program of a mobile platform for connecting fellow tennis players
Project duration: 4 weeks
My role: UX researcher
Approach
Research questions
What are pain points for tennis players living in San Francisco?
How do they find people to play tennis with?
What do players look for in a tennis partner?
Methods
Semi-structured interviews, concept testing, and competitive analysis
Outcome
Insights & Design Opportunities
Interviews identified 6 user archetypes for tennis players.
Competitive analysis revealed gaps in the market that aligned with participants’ pain points.
8 insights identified from synthesis that translated to 8 design changes.
Design changes were prioritized for Beta program and incorporated into the product.
Impact
User Adoption and Feedback
Successful launch of beta: onboarded over 50 new users ($0 spent on marketing), hitting engagement targets
Enabled beta program to collect customer feedback given high onboarding and engagement
Opportunities identified directly informed product roadmap and development priorities for subsequent work
Recreational tennis players are an untapped market whose needs are not currently being met. They resort to using non-purpose-built tools and desire more opportunities to play and build community.
A new, unpopular public court reservation system makes players scramble for reservations. This has led to massive chats on platforms like Facebook and Slack where players then post their court time asking if anyone wants to play at that time and location. Alternatives are paid programs that set up small groups into “flex leagues” which is not a good value.