Teamstuff
Teamstuff is a multi-award winning desktop & mobile app for social sports teams.
Challenge
To create a tool to help social sports teams manage and communicate schedules and responsibilities easily, quickly and enjoyably.
Users
Coaches, managers, parents & players on social sports teams, and administrators of the clubs overseeing them.
Role
UX, UI, branding and copy writing for Teamstuff and Teamstuff Pro and its companion apps Teamstuff Clubs and Coachstuff.
Research to Ideation
After establishing the product owner’s desired outcome, our resources and limitations, I researched and analysed competitors for strengths and weaknesses we might leverage, and set about understanding the users and their needs better. I interviewed people who played sport socially, clarified key users, their journeys and pain points.
Lots of sketching allowed me to fluidly explore the UX and rapidly identify obstacles and opportunities. Wireframes brought clarity to the user flows and functionality. Later, post launch, we gradually amassed data on behavioural patterns and feedback from users that informed refinements to the UX and new features. A notable change in direction informed by our data was to move our attention predominantly to the mobile app.
Research to Ideation
After establishing the product owner’s desired outcome, our resources and limitations, I researched and analysed competitors for strengths and weaknesses we might leverage, and set about understanding the users and their needs better. I interviewed people who played sport socially, clarified key users, their journeys and pain points.
Lots of sketching allowed me to fluidly explore the UX and rapidly identify obstacles and opportunities. Wireframes brought clarity to the user flows and functionality. Later, post launch, we gradually amassed data on behavioural patterns and feedback from users that informed refinements to the UX and new features. A notable change in direction informed by our data was to move our attention predominantly to the mobile app.
Brand & UI
I explored the brand, drawing out our desired emotional identity and values – friendly, accessible, light, fun and yet professional and bold. I went through lots of alternatives and revisions until we hit the mark. The ‘m’ in our logo with the three dots represents the team I also created the tagline, ‘Less work, more play’. I then applied the brand to create a UI that embodied it and supported those principles within the user experience.
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Onboarding
Onboarding needed to be rapid, helpful and engaging to maximise retention and get users straight into team business. Clean sign-up/login, a concise walkthrough and help setting up profiles and teams was essential.
Onboarding
Onboarding needed to be rapid, helpful and engaging to maximise retention and get users straight into team business. Clean sign-up/login, a concise walkthrough and help setting up profiles and teams was essential.
The Overview
Supporting users with multiple teams / schedules meant expansive, variable navigation, so we used a side drawer. A time based activity screen kept users up to date and a quick view of ‘Today’ let you know what next in your schedule.
Scheduling
Users needed a clear schedule with the most pertinent information – for all their teams and players (mum/dad/kids) – at a glance, and admins needed a quick way to add new events.
Scheduling
Users needed a clear schedule with the most pertinent information – for all their teams and players (mum/dad/kids) – at a glance, and admins needed a quick way to add new events.
Events
The heart of the app, events needed to provide all event details (when/where/who/responsibilities) and communicate user availability. Coaches needed to be able to edit details, rosters, duties and to message the team.
About the Team
The team home page enabled admins to share important information and resources with members – from basic information about the team to member profiles, resources, messaging and more.
About the Team
The team home page enabled admins to share important information and resources with members – from basic information about the team to member profiles, resources, messaging and more.
Memories
One of the most important aspects of the game is the emotional engagement we get from the actual experience. To help members share their memories of games we added a photo gallery.
Payments
Managing payments, such as membership fees, in one place was important to our users, so we tools for admins to share and manage payments, see what was owing and for members to pay easily and fast – digitally with Stripe and a cash receipt feature for recording cash payments.
Payments
Managing payments, such as membership fees, in one place was important to our users, so we tools for admins to share and manage payments, see what was owing and for members to pay easily and fast – digitally with Stripe and a cash receipt feature for recording cash payments.
Teamstuff Pro
We introduced a subscription based upgrade called Teamstuff Pro a few years after launch. The calls to action for this needed to be powerful and persuasive to convince existing users to pay for more, when many were already content with what they had!
Clubs
The backbone of the team is the club, so we created an administrative web app, Teamstuff Clubs, where club admins could manage their teams and enabled clubs to easily and quickly share schedules, manage club events, monetise with their own sponsors, message, and even measure club engagement.
Clubs
The backbone of the team is the club, so we created an administrative web app, Teamstuff Clubs, where club admins could manage their teams and enabled clubs to easily and quickly share schedules, manage club events, monetise with their own sponsors, message, and even measure club engagement.
The Outcome
The result was an app with a user base that grew exponentially month on month, growing to 1.2M+ users in the first 4 years, with a consistent satisfaction rating to rival some of the world’s greats and which won 5 international awards. There were plenty of learnings along the way – fed primarily by user feedback and analytics – the need to improve features and add new ones, the ageing of the app’s UX/UI within an aggressively growing technological landscape (requiring an incremental redesign), the need to focus on the mobile app and the fact that we hadn’t monetised the app effectively from the outset.
