Takes Live Sports Chat

Design Sprint and execution for the real-time sports banter App

Sprint Workshop

LEAP. ran a two-week remote Iteration Sprint 
with the Takes product team, who are based in 
San Francisco to help them validate a new product idea that would see them combine social media and sports together in one fun app. The Sprint outcome was so compelling it was used to communicate the idea, and the value proposition to potential early investors.

The Sprint Challenge

Seize a potential market opportunity with actual data and a tangible product vision.The Sprint also enabled the team to observe how fans would react to the suite of features offered to help them to create 'their Take', measure their ease of consumption and understand if downloading 
the app would be something they would actively do.

Expert Interviews & HMWs

Michael & Liz defined the challenge and we kicked off the Sprint with the Expert Interview so we could get to the bottom of exactly what HMWs would outline this epic challenge. Of the many that we collected, we voted on the top ones so we could add them to our map and use them a little later on.

Long Term Goal & Can We

To ensure we were aligned on our shared north star, we defined our optimistic Long-Term Goal: What would the Takes platform look like in 2 Years’ Time?We then had to dial up the pessimism a little and think, what are the biggest potential blockers in achieving our goal?  To make sure we were headed in the right direction, we defined three Sprint Questions or hypotheses that we wanted to prove or get a clear 'yes' from our user tests.

Create Solutions, Vote and Decide

We each created an individual concept based on our interpretation of the guiding principles. which would offer a potential solution to our challenge. The chosen sketches would help the Sprint team answer the 3 Sprint Questions. Which ideas do we want to test with users?

The Prototype

8 hours later, we had created the first version of the prototype. A week one click dummy will likely not even resemble a realistic product experience, some features will not even make full sense yet, but it doesn't matter, this is just to prompt our users into telling us what they want.

User Testing

Aaand finally - it’s the Interview Day. We have tested with five NFL fans based in US. The more critique at this stage, the better. Remember the aim of this stage is to test the validity of the product, not its usability. You know how people say 'break it to make it' well thats exactly what we're doing in our Sprints! These were the scores from first round of user testing, when asked.

"It will be great for fan bases and users to discuss those important sport moments. A platform that caters to those key moments in the game while also keeping the community engaged 24/7 is unprecedented and something that Twitter cannot currently achieve."

NFL Fan

Product execution. From Sprint to MVP in less than 5 months

What happened after Sprint?

After our Sprint, Takes' Founders were equipped with both bulletproof business validation and a prototype from the first user test!  This was a great addition to the already thought through pitch that helped them secure the first round of funding for the MVP execution phase.

Feature Ranking Study

The main goal of feature study was to identify which features are ‘must haves’ for the MVP and why. Even though the research sessions were unmoderated, meaning the fidelity wasn't as high as if it was in person, we still managed to get rich feedback which correlated with our early Sprint data!

Emotional Journey Mapping

During the initial stages of our MVP, we ran workshops dedicated to the users - sports fans’ emotional journey throughout the product experience. This was a great measurement technique to really understand how our user felt at different points of the user journey. Uncovering points of frustration & delight lead to  opportunities to address users’ pain points.

Sketches & Wireframes

The Sprint provided the team with a business validation study.  It wasn’t a real product, yet! The execution phase meant we could now start designing the product, and putting the user first. Our starting point was still the data from the Sprint so we were able to utilise the data already discovered.

First Design Concepts

Through brand design iterations, we explored variations of Takes personality, which would make a mark on the sport industry.

Usability Study

In June, we ran first of many Usability Studies with US NFL fans. Research team identified the following research questions that we wanted to address:

  • Are the customer journey flows intuitive?
  • Understanding where they have friction?
  • What info do users retain/value in this initial moment?
  • Do the mechanisms of adding people into 
chats make sense?

First Build Out & User Testing

The Takes’ engineering team bent time and space! They worked super hard to turn designs into the first app experience. Even though the first build wasn’t perfect it was a strong represenation of our designs that we could interact with. We were getting super excited for what Takes was slowly becoming so we ran another User Testing to get feedback on the mechanisms of ‘Creating a Take’.

MVP published!!

August 4th - a special day when about 100 Takes Insiders get to use the alpha product LIVE for the first time. We were excited to learn what fans liked and didn’t, but also to see the sparks of magic & delight. This is the first step in the Takes mission to bring thousands of people together when watching sport.At LEAP. we are proud and honoured to be a part of this journey from the very beginning!

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