Score - Welcome

The Score

In June 2021, Single-Sports betting was soon to be legal with the passing of Bill C-218 in the Canadian Senate. Score Media and Gaming, Canada’s favourite sports app, announced it will be coming up with a betting feature soon. Sports enthusiasts were eagerly waiting to try out this feature with their friends and play with their favourite team. How might we facilitate betting in as few steps possible on an Apple Watch while providing users critical information needed to place bets?

Role: worked with Justin and Summary on this project. We shared the work equally and each took on the role of UX Researcher, UX Designer, UI Designer and web developer.

Prototype

The Process

Empathize

Define

Ideate

Prototype

Test

Opportunities

We started with the proto personas and completed a Heuristic Evaluation of the current flow of the watch app to review effectiveness and opportunities. We redline annotated the landing page of the watch app, search function for the game and in-game stats of an ongoing game. The watch app highlighted game stats and score, and did not have a betting feature.

Having gathered this information, we conducted user interviews and user surveys to understand why people gamble, the needs and pain points of gambling online, and user behavior on the score app. It was found that 63% of our users had gambled in the past and it was either for fun or during social situations. It was also found that sports betting favors familiar teams and team players, and users are more comfortable placing bets with friends on game night. All users expressed their concern for gambling addiction and mentioned they would appreciate a feature that prevents them from betting over budget.

As part of the research, we also user tested the current watch app and recorded familiarity and intuitiveness of the current flow. This helped us identify pain points and opportunities. We found that 40% of users preferred a larger font and felt there was too much information on the app, which could be confusing at times.

The Score watch app has a wide range of opportunities in store for the future. We would like to introduce an ‘Easy-to-Understand’ tutorial for beginners as users are still not familiar with the variety of betting options available to them. Voice enabled betting and Gamification of betting are innovative features that could be worked on for the future.

We ran the new user flow and high-fidelity prototype through another round of User Testing . Through this, we recognized that a confirmation message after placing a bet goes a long way, and a more structured flow for pooled bets. Users also wanted more options to place their bets. So, we introduced other types of bets such as Prop bets on the watch app.

We built a mid fidelity prototype with no images and a clean layout. Keeping limited space availability in mind, we built the wireframe to be highly focussed and responsive, providing timely, high-value information that enables important actions. We also created the UI Style Tile identifying various button states, font size, color and more. The wireframe was designed to perform two to three actions in as few steps as possible on an Apple watch. The actions can be measured in seconds, indicating the intuitiveness and timeliness the app represents.

With this put together, we then built the High-fidelity prototype with buttons, icons and typography in place. Users can select games, view game info and place a bet from their Apple watch. Users can also place pooled bets with their friends through the watch app. The user needs to create the group beforehand and set their budget limitations on the mobile app.

We then coded the watch app with CSS, HTML and Java Script.

With the help of user insights, we brainstormed ideas through the I like, I wish and I want and Feature Prioritization methodology. We were able to narrow down on pooled bets that allows users to place bets with their friends, and the ability to view current bets on the app. We also wanted to address the major concern about addiction by introducing filters that would prevent users going over budget.

We also completed a competitive analysis with Bet365, Betway, Sportsnet and Google to understand what our direct and indirect competitors offer to users, and learn opportunities available for the score watch app.

With this information, we created a User Journey Map and determined the User Flow for the watch app.

The Affinity diagram and Empathy maps helped curate the user persona, Bandwagon Bobby , who enjoys spending time with his friends and sets a budget for entertainment every month. He wants to have a good time with his people, has to be up-to-date on events, doesn’t mind spending a little while hanging out and is responsible with his spending. He likes apps that doesn’t require too much effort. How might we facilitate betting in as few steps possible on an Apple watch while providing users critical information needed to place bets?