iOS Football.
Client:
Sky Betting and Gaming
Background:
In 2019, Sky Betting and Gaming (SBG) launched a ‘Native Proposition’ initiative. At that time the business was historically structured as ‘web first’, with the majority of the iOS experience based in a web wrapper.
The company needed to evolve to adhere to Apple guidelines — with a significant threat of being removed from the App store — there was also an opportunity to provide a tailored experience for the iOS customer base.
By investing in the iOS strategy, SBG were able to maintain speed to market and take advantage of emerging technologies and features — moving quickly to deliver features and integrate with 3rd parties for acquisition and innovation enabling.
A. Football Homepage
The SkyBet football homepage was in steady decline in terms of usage (clicks and dwell time). The page was structured historically as a list of featured games — there was an opportunity to revisit the architecture of football, make each page work infinitely harder and create an identity for the brand.
We spent time researching and iteratively designing a set of experiences that would vastly improve a customers experience.
We focused on 3 key scenarios on the featured football homepage and 1 scenario based on a bet tracking experience; Pre-Live & In-Play Football on a Saturday and Monday Night Football — allowing the page to arrange/organise dynamically based on date, time and key events. We interspersed data points with key links and blocks of content that were either In-Play or starting soon. We provided endless scrolling content with different previews and entry points for the user.
Process:
The core team consisted of myself and a second lead designer, a solutions architect and a product manager.
Discovery: Deep dive into research, findings, data and competitor analysis / canvas session and initial collaboration with stakeholders
Journey maps & low fidelity concepts / internal testing
Early med-high fed design feedback (with key stakeholders)
Prototype review / validation & testing. Peer & stakeholder reviews
Results:
Please get in touch for detailed results.
B. Omnipresent Video Player
In July 2020, as part of the ‘Native Proposition’, an Omnipresent Video Player (OVP) was green lighted for an initial discovery. The feature allowed customers to view streams for events while navigating the site/app, until it's closed. When a stream is available for an event, it can be launched from the event page (a page with live sport) or My Bets page (personalised hub page).
A web OVP existed, which was only available on web pages within the app, resulting in a poor customer journey — the OVP disappeared if the customer navigated to a fully native page such as the homepage, then reappeared when the customer returned to a webpage.
The Brief:
The task was to create a fully native version of the OVP for the iOS app — customers would be able to view streams across all pages. While offering a fully immersive customer experience, time spent (dwell time) in the app for live events was seen as a significant driver for this initiative. Improved dwell time was perceived as an indication of an improved experience for our customers.
The approach to this project was initially deemed ‘out the box’ to match expected iOS behaviours and save time on delivery, with the view to create a bespoke experience at a later date.
Process:
The team consisted of myself (lead designer), a solutions architect, product manager and the iOS development team.
Discovery: Deep dive into research, findings, data and competitor analysis / canvas session and initial collaboration with stakeholders.
The iOS team (6 software engineers) were all involved in early discovery. We ran remote workshops identifying unique picture and picture experiences from competitors with a view to maximising our viewing experience
Journey maps & low fidelity concepts / internal testing
Early med-high fed design feedback (with key stakeholders)
Prototype review / validation & testing. Peer & stakeholder reviews
Comprehensive development involvement followed by a technical handover
Breakdown of components, annotated and elaborated. Designs in Zeplin, fully guided with multiple viewports considered
Working prototype to show interaction and / or animation. This could be in the form of a video with notes to explain the scenario
Assets supplied to Development with daily support via stand up or Slack
Work with Product and Analytics to incrementally release and learn from each new feature
Progress:
While we set out to create an ‘out the box’ experience, the core team agreed on a hybrid / customisable approach, as the features we wanted / didn’t want changed the scope. Ultimately this gave the team the freedom to use alternative gestures.
I spent time prototyping different UI variants, and testing the usability of the feature internally (SBG participants) and externally (via User Zoom).
I documented everything in Zeplin (at the time was our hand off tool of choice) — we built and released the feature incrementally, with gestures being introduced at a later date.
Results:
The mission for this project was to fully commit to using Combine across the app, compositional layouts and diffable datasources for modern collection views.
Within the native app we incrementally delivered our own video player from the ground up, allowing our customers to stream high quality picture in picture content whilst using our apps, without impacting their experience.