PlayYourCourt: Love Means Nothing, UX Means Everything

The client, a tennis based company, wanted to rework their online presence. PlayYourCourt (PYC) aims to modernize the tennis community by providing the ability to connect with other nearby players for a game. The platform aims to enhance tennis experience for users by connecting players with practice partners, coaches and even leagues.

PYC plans to redesign their website and wanted to gain key insights into their current users, their behavior, habits and possible limitations of the platform. Another focus of the client was to increase user engagement and brand exposure to the wider tennis community. 

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The research team was tasked to understand PYC users on a deeper level: understanding the importance of community an addition to challenges, motivations, and experiences with online platforms in relation to tennis.

The research strategy and execution was conducted by team, in which I played an involved role.  I launched the design and research plan for the study; allowing us to pitch our plan to our client. After client approval, we went ahead to preparing the discussion guide and conducting 20 in-depth-interviews. Finally, The data was synthesized and our results, recommendations and insights were presented to the client and UX Design team. 

Preliminary Steps

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The CEO of PlayYourCourt was reached out via LinkedIn in which he was asked if he would like research conducted to help aid his business objectives. A meeting was then scheduled to align company goals with research team. We were able to pitch some ideas as well as understanding PYC objectives.

We leaned towards a foundational approach so that we could better understand tennis players and the users of the PYC platform.  We wanted to understand what challenges PYC users had but also how to continue growing the PYC platform by examining what tennis players looked for in online communities. A pitch was then provided to our client in which outlined research objectives, a timeline, recruitment strategy and study execution. 
 

Conducted 20 in-depth-interviews (IDIs) over a period of 2 weeks to understand how players interact with online tennis communities.

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Participant Recruitment

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Recruitment was done on online Tennis communities on two primary platforms. Participants were sourced from Facebook and Reddit online tennis communities. Posters were also placed across Tennis clubs in the greater Seattle area and the greater Los Angeles Area.

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A discussion guide was written and went through a few iterations after a few pilot test. When participants were being recruited, they were scheduled within a few hours of initial contact and were sent reminders a day before initial interview.  Below demographics of participants are provided:

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Participants

• 20 remote 1:1 interview sessions via zoom

• 10 participants were current subscribers of PYC while 10 were not subscribers but tennis enthusiast. 

• Ages between 26-68 years old

• 15 men, 5 women

• Across 9 states 

• Played tennis at least 1x per week

• Involved or interested in finding an online tennis community.

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Execution of Study

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Upon receiving eligible participants, 45 minutes -1 hour in-depth-interview sessions took place via Zoom to better understand user frustrations and understand the different needs of players in the tennis community. After each session, I analyzed my notes and rewatched recordings to ensure quality of data.  Transcripts were read to ensure data was translated correctly and to find any possible patterns or themes. Recommendations were then created based on research findings.

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The collected data was then presented to our client, the CEO of PYC as well as his UX design team. The presentation inspired a rich conversation with the team and inspired discussion on implementation of collected data. 

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As the research concluded, the team met to discuss limitations, gain points and ways to improve future research projects.

When discussing perception of the tennis community, participants shared a common theme of tennis being a "wealthier" sport. Participants who were subscribers of PYC tended to have higher disposable income whilst nonsubscribers viewed the sport as inaccessible for most. The PYC platform was also virtually unheard of amongst nonsubscribers who were actively seeking or would be interested in joining an online community.

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The researchers aimed to recruit 10 non-subscribers so that we can get an understanding of the tennis community as a whole and what motivates them to seek out online communities. We recruited 10 subscribers of the PYC platform, with the help of the CEO, so that we can understand current pain points on the platform and how we can create a more seamless experience for users.

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The in-depth-interviews were created to answer four crucial components of tennis players. Subscribers of PYC were asked additional questions that were focused on the overall app experience. 

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(1) What motivates players to seek online communities for                 tennis? 

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(2) What do users look for in tennis services?

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(3) What challenges and experiences do tennis players currently have on online platform?

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(4) How do tennis players incorporate tennis into their everyday lives?

Participants discussed their thoughts on online tennis communities and what they would expect from an online platform providing services. Our recruitment strategies were successful in attracting a set of participants that were diverse to provide valuable insights. 

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• Provided insight into the need of an online tennis platform, many users stated they would join an online tennis community that fulfilled their needs.

• Helped highlight the current perception of tennis and how it is still seen as inaccessible to marginalized communities. Diverse marketing campaigns were encouraged to popularize the sport

• App specific recommendations were shared with the CEO and the UX design team to help increase engagement amongst current subscribers

• Data collected was written in a story-driven method so that information could be shared and discussed with CEO and UX Design team.