MLB: AtBat
Case Study: Add a Feature
MLB At Bat is a popular app where users can watch live and on-demand Major League Baseball (MLB) games, Minor League Baseball (MiLB) games, and MLB.TV affiliates. It also allows users to listen to live radio broadcasts for home and away games. There is a subscription based service where users can listen to out of market MLB games live or on demand. Users have the ability to customize and filter news content, get real-time highlights and on-deck alerts for followed players, follow the action of the game with real-time player positions and batted balls, and have live activities support for game updates right on their lock screen.
Background
Problem
MLB At Bat offers many live features for users. Users can watch games in real time but lack the ability to interact with each other. There are many other sports apps that offer features for users to interact and MLB At Bat seems to be behind in adding a feature of this kind
Research Goal
Propose a new social feature to be added to MLB At Bat. This feature will be a live chat between users who are watching the same game. Users will be able to talk with one another, react to the game in real time. Like each other's comments, and reply directly to other users' comments. Users will be able to gain a sense of community within the app. User engagement will increase across the app as well as bring in new users by adding a social feature to the app
Research - Competitor Analysis
The sports app market consists of various players
Competitors
Real
Apple Sports
ESPN: Live Sports & Scores
theScore: Sports & News
Similarities
Follow favorite teams
View team standings and schedules
Offer a mobile app version
Key Learnings
Prioritize fewer key feature rather than overwhelm the user with many different feature
Opportunities
Community creates user engagement
Research - User Interviews
Objective
To gather insight from sports fans (ideally baseball fans) on the addition of a live chat feature to MLB At Bat.
8 participants recruited
Key Takeaways
All the participants including those who haven't used MLB At Bat agree that the app would benefit from a community feature.
All participants believe that the addition of a community feature in sports apps will increase engagement as well as draw users to use these apps over others that do not have the feature
Research - Interview Findings and Synthesis
After conducting user interviews, the information gains was compiled into an affinity map to group patterns between participants
The groupings consisted of
Sport app of choice
Frequently Used Features
Community Features Desired
Research - Persona
Research - Problem Statements
I would like to explore ways that users can like each other's reactions as well as comment on each other's reactions while watching a live MLB game.
I would like to explore ways that users can follow each other
I would like to explore ways that users can react in real time to MLB games
Research - How Might We
How might we design a way for users to interact with each other while
watching a MLB game?
How might we provide users with a community?
How might we make the game watching experience more intriguing and interactive for users?
Design - Project Goals
Design - User Flow
A user flow was then created to visually represent the steps a user will take to accomplish a specific task
Design - Low Fidelity Mockups
Early stage designs were then mocked up to outline the basic structure and layout of the new chat feature being added
My initial idea was instead of creating new pages for this feature, I would take advantage of existing space
Design - High Fidelity Mockups
A detailed and polished representation of the feature was then created. This showcased the final visual design elements assisting in bringing the concept to life
I took advantage of the “Gameday” page by adding a new “Chat” tab
Design - Usability Testing
Objective
To evaluate how a user will navigate as well as interact with the newly added “Live Chat” feature
5 participants with various degrees of sports knowledge and viewing habits
Each participant was asked to complete the following tasks
Navigate from the home page to the gameday page
Comment on the live game
Reply to another users comment
Comment an emoji
React to a users comment with an emoji
Like the game
Next steps
Consider the insights and participant feedback to effectively iterate the design for the final prototype.
Design - Iterations
Interaction bar on the emojis overlay was made slightly larger
Removed reply text input from the emoji overlay
The icon the post a comment now changes to blue when text has been input into the text bar
The number next to the emoji icon showing the number of emojis interacted with a comment was changed to yellow to match the icon
Design - Prototype
A preliminary version of the app was created to visualize the functionality of the new chat feature. This prototype takes users through the flow if interacting with the new feature.
Users are able to
Navigate from the home page to the gameday page
Comment on the live game
Reply to another users comment
Comment an emoji
React to a users comment with an emoji
Like the game
Summary and Next Steps
The chat feature was added to MLB:AtBat to enhance user engagement, improve community interactions, and provide real time discussions around games and teams. This allows fans to connect and share insights within the app, increasing user engagement.
The next steps in improving this newly added chat feature would be to expand on the community aspect of the feature. Users will eventually be able to follow friends, post updates in the form of photo and videos as well as post status updates for their friends to view and interact with.