Platform for young footballers aspiring to play professionally
Key highlights of this project
Overview
Role & Responsibilities
Talento Today is a start-up founded in Köln, Germany in 2020, focused on the domain of youth football.
Their product app, Talento Today, is a talent scouting and networking platform for young footballers aspiring to play professionally.
Product Designer
User Research, Interaction, Visual design, Prototyping & Testing
Team
Client
UX Designer, Product Manager, React Developer, Fullstack Developer, Backend Developer, QA, Scrum Master, Engineering Architect
Talento Today
Project Summary
Business Objective
Create a platform to connect aspiring footballers, scouts, and coaches to look for guidance and talent hunt respectively
Success Criteria
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Test prototypes with users of the application
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Develop hybrid app for both iOS and Android users
Use Goals
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Aspirants to showcase their talent, get recognized join football academies and become professional footballers
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Coaches to look for talent, post challenges, and identify good candidates for the training
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Scouts look for to evaluate the talent and create report
Challenges
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Understand the domain
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Testing of application with stakeholders
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Prioritisation based on stakeholder changing needs
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Usability testing
Outcome
Successful beta release of the application
The Problem
Talento Today came up with a set of observations that they had identified within the youth football ecosystem in Europe.
Pro football aspirations
At least 30 million young athletes in Europe - and even more worldwide - share the dream of becoming professional soccer players.
Difficulty in gaining exposure
Unfortunately, a significant percentage of these young athletes never get the opportunity to show their talent due to outdated, tech-bare scouting systems in place that prevent coaches from widespread exposure to talent.
Lack of tech in youth scouting
In professional soccer, it is typical to use digital tools like video analysis to recruit in professional soccer. But in youth soccer, there is nothing of the sort.
The Mission
To build the social network necessary for youth football/soccer talents to become professional players.
Connect youth soccer talents with professional soccer clubs by digitizing, standardizing and rating data.
User Research
Stakeholder workshop
A 5-day workshop was conducted with the Talento stakeholders, Product Manager, and Engineering Architect. My research encompassed -
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Understand overview of football coaching ecosystem
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Roles and responsibilities of members at each level
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Day to Day tasks that need to be accomplished
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Pain points, motivation
Fig: Screenshot of stakeholder workshop using Miro (Digital collaboration tool) as one of the outcome of workshop
Workshop Outcome
Lack of transparency for players & parents on how to get scouted.
No single source of truth for a coach to document player progress and prove the football school’s success.
Lack of technological resources for scouts to capture, structure, and analyze potential players.
Define Product Vision
Be a social network for youth football talent
Digitize, standardize and rate player data
Be a safe digital platform to showcase talent
Be the amazon of youth football players
Match supply of youth players with demand from scouts
Understand the Ecosystem
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Fig: Screenshot of football ecosystem in stakeholder workshop using Miro (Digital collaboration tool) as one of the outcomes of workshop
Qualitative Interviews
12
Interviews
Players start training at the age of 6-7 years old
Training happens at a holistic level, where fitness and diet is also managed besides core technique.
Coaches care about making the game enjoyable for players besides helping them achieve their dreams of playing professionally.
Parents feel that coaches do not always suggest a club change for a player’s career, so the parent has to keep track of their child’s progress.
Users located in Germany,Netherlands, UK
A very small percentage of players get invited to trials as compared to the number of aspirants.
Players like to be engage with teammates even off the field.
Scouts do not use a lot of social media to search for talent as it does not have the required information on the player.
Competitor Products
Tonsser
An app to connect young players with other people in the ecosystem, using player-generated content.
Wyscout
Scouting, match analysis, networking, training, and player transfers
eScout
An app for players to upload videos and take challenges and get noticed by partner clubs.
GTS Smart Scout
An app that gives scouts a competitive advantage to target, report and recruit players faster and more efficiently.
User Journeys
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Parent/Player
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Fig: Screenshot of user journey for Parent/Player using Miro (Digital collaboration tool)
Scout
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Fig: Screenshot of user journey for Scout using Miro (Digital collaboration tool)
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Coach
Fig: Screenshot of user journey for Coach using Miro (Digital collaboration tool)
Insights
Awareness
Awareness
Identification
Players
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Players/parents do not know of the right channels to reach out to scouts or know if a scout is genuine.
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Player needs to remain consistent at training and remain motivated even after not being selected at trials.
Coach
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The coach does not have a track record of successful players from his/her academy.
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Players need to be kept engaged and motivated even off the field, especially during a lockdown.
Scout
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Information collected is stored on different places/mediums can be hard to locate/share
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The scout has to scour a large amount of data to find relevant information on players.
Feature Prioritization
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Fig: Screenshot of feature prioritization using dot voting o Miro (Digital collaboration tool)
Fig: Screenshot of feature prioritisation for upcoming release
Player Experience
Workflow
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Guided onboarding focusing on profile creation
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Separate sections for exploring videos and interacting with academy teammates.
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Focus on holistic improvement through articles and tips.
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Feedback and encouragement in the form of ratings and badges.
Fig: Screenshot of signup and onboarding workflow for player
Information Architecture
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Dedicated sections for exploring new players and interacting with the team
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‘Record’ as the central navigation button, as it is the key feature
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Detailed profile section as it would appear to other players/coaches.
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Fig: Screenshot of information architecture for player experience
Wireframes
Coach Experience
Workflow
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Account available post verification, for a secure environment
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Guided, step-by-step process for creating teams and camps
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Flexibility in rating single player as opposed to entire teams
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Fig: Screenshot of signin and create workflow for coach
Information Architecture
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Dedicated sections for managing teams and for guiding/engaging players.
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Record’ as the central navigation button, as it is the key feature
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Fig: Screenshot of information architecture for coach experience
Wireframes
Scout Experience
Workflow
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Ability to view curated player lists as well as create a personal shortlist.
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Simple two-step process to view players as per requirements.
Fig: Screenshot of workflow for scout
Information Architecture
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Ability to decide between searching for and exploring players
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Dedicated section for shortlisted players.
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Talento Today content section for relevant news.
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Fig: Screenshot of information architecture for coach experience
Wireframes
Visual Design
Fig: Screenshot of inspiration board
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Fig: Screenshot of mood board created using keywords
Fig: Screenshot of visual identity and colour palette
The Solution
Player
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Signup
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Onboarding
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Follow Football Club
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Follow Players
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Capture Video
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Publish Video
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Tag Players
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Take Up Challenge and Capture Video
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Post Video
Coach
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Onboarding
Coach
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Create Teams and Training Camps
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Adding players to Teams and Training Camps
Coach
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Create Training Videos
Coach
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Create Challenges
Coach
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View Feeds
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Profile
Scout
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Search Players
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Save Players
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News
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Feed
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Profile
Usability Testing
On-field prototype testing
Method: Sharing of prototype by the client with players and coaches from partner academies
Insights
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Sign up to be given priority over sign-in, as the majority of users have been newly acquired
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Corrections required in some terms used (eg. Date of birth instead of DOB)
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Suboptimal video playback experience (performance issue)
Analytics
Mixpanel tool for Analytics
Method: Use of Mixpanel to track event-based analytics and drop-offs to derive actionable insights
Insights
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Sign up flow could be optimized by eliminating repetitive actions due to development constraints (signing in again after OTP confirmation)
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Priority to be given to signing up with a phone number, due to higher OTP delivery success rates through that medium
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More long-term guidance and day-to-day engagement features are required to achieve a higher retention rate.
Triangulation
Method: Analyzing the following feature from 3 perspectives to derive insights
Insights
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Recommendations for following users should be an ongoing process like Instagram/Facebook
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Users follow recommendations should be based on common city or local club
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Get more relevant influencers on the platform
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Use more videos and display them prominently; better user engagement (loop effect)
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"Follow" button should be added to the video itself
Improvement in Metrix
Project Learnings
1. Simplicity is strength
As a designer, we are often lured by attractive, trendy and out of the box designs. But, We must always remember the ‘why’. The primary goal is to understand the user, their problems and then come up with a design that solves it.
2. Prioritize
Create a strategic plan to launch an MVP. This helps deal with out-of-scope requests that could potentially derail the project and helps deliver a quality product in time.
3. Seek out feedback early and continually
The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism. Keeping the stakeholders/users in loop and testing solutions in whatever form (paper, low-fi or hi-fi) as early as possible saves ample amount of time and re-work.
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