An investigation with ESPN into what makes users click
This was a UX research project for ESPN.com through the NYC Media Lab which focused on the user experience of millennials, smartphone owners and sports fans watching ESPN videos on their mobile devices. This project encompassed a UX process involving research, creation, and assessment. It began with the research phase, aimed at identifying ways to improve the experience of viewing ESPN videos on mobile devices.
Understand current experience with ESPN.com users on watching videos on mobile devices
Make the information easy to find
Add personalization options to prompt more video watching
The process took about 10 weeks and we took overall 5 steps to arrive at final deliverables. The user experience is the consequence of using a product. It is not just the user interface – it is how the product works in its entirety.
To better understand the user watching experience on the ESPN mobile website, we conducted a mix of primary and secondary research. This effort helps identify the paint points of watching experience.
what is the current experience of watching mobile videos on the ESPN site?
7 participants recorded their experiences and behaviors over 7 days resulting in 46 total responses.
Diary Study Entry Formhow do users interact with video on a mobile platform?
11 interviews were completed to further drill down into the experience of the ESPN.com mobile user.
Interview Acriptswhat are the mobile video preferences of sports fans?
98 participants answered 14 questions about mobile video preferences of sports fans; open for 9 days.
Questionnaire QuestionsIn order to understand prior research on the interaction between various users and sports platforms, we conducted a competitive analysis. We hope to use insights from this process to inform our study design. We mainly focused on the following five key parts: Account Sign Up, personalization, site organization, separating of content and ads to compare with other competitor websites. We compared with Bleacher Report, SB Nation, Fox Sports, NBC, and CBS Sports.
After gathering all datas, we came together and shared our interview notes and research data. We held discussions and did an affinity mapping to synthesized the research insights and concluded the possible opportunities for improvements.
"One the main frustrations is that the site doesn't seem organized. It can be hard to read the main page and find the information I'm looking for. The articles and videos don't appear to be in any certain order so I end up scrolling through everything most of the time." -
-Diary Study Respondent P5
"The current ESPN model of incorporating the commercial as part of the video on mobile phones is terrible. I hate it. YouTube generally does mobile video right. Overlays would be amazing."
- Questionnaire Respondent P72
"If I was able to say 'only game highlights', and other interesting stuff during the game, and no annoying fan videos. I’d watch a lot more if it were exactly what I wanted.
- Interview Participant 4A
"It was boring…It's not the website's fault... just the fact that I hate college football. That was the only thing accessible from the homepage so I left pretty immediately."
- Diary Study Participant P3
"I HATEEEE when I am trying to see a highlight reel and its two pundits talking about the impact of the game instead. Get off my screen dudes, I want to watch the highlights!"
-Questionnaire Respondent P77
Based on the ESPN analysis of user interviews, questionnaires and dairy research, we created our users’ types to identify the typically 2 main ESPN users groups. We used personas to help us stay anchored on the users and avoid letting our desire for features trump user needs. For each proto-persona we identified their fan level as well as their key tasks flow at each stage in the journey.
User flows for each key helped us identify key actions within the ESPN mobile website and the features each users focus on first.
After identifying the ESPN target users, we started the brainstorming session to thinking out the solution for solving the pain points. Here we did not only focus on the video watching solution since we thought that the bad watching experience on ESPN website was related to the site structure so we tried to solve the five pain points to enhance the general usability then the users can easily find the content they want. Here we tried the following design direction: Improve the organization on the main feed, promote the filtering of content, encourage account creating and more refined personalization and provide consistency is design and tagging to enhance the usability.
To solve the problem about the poor organization and lack of variety in feed content limits interest in videos for the super sport users, we decided to add a filter on the top of the main feed which users can quickly filter some information in and to find the right information they would like to see. Moreover, we also add a login button to let users can have a more personalization presence setting.
To solve the problem that users don’t want to see content they aren’t interested in for causal users, we decided to add a section title to clarify the information structure on the main feed. Users will be able to jump the section they would like to see. We also added the score section back to the mobile site since most of casual users would like to check the scores.
To reduce the frustration of the mismatch between actual and expected video content users want to see, we checked the metadata and raw data of the videos form ESPN and make a guide line for improving the matching system between the headline and content, and the display time between ads and real video content.
10 user tests were performed in the final prototype testing. We tested the filter design options. Suprisely, all users strongly preferred to “opt-in” to specific content. Therefore, the final prototype was created, keeping these user preferences in mind. Using a screen capture software we created a simulated user flow with our refined prototype.
Allows users to select the content they wanted to see while filtering other content out of their feed
Prototype Link
Allows users to deselect content they did not want to see, filtering said content out of their feed.
Our team continually evaluated, through comprehensive design critiques and in-person usability testing, the extent to which each prototype met ESPN’s goal of improving the experience of watching its videos on mobile devices.
We presented our final prototype to an audience of 20 ESPN executives who are involved with mobile video strategy at ESPN’s headquarters in Bristol, CT. Deliverables included a demo video of the ideal use case of their prototype, summaries of findings from four original research methods, and persona briefs created from research insights. We also highlighted specific overarching questions for ESPN to consider for improving the user experience of mobile users. We realized that people expect personalized experiences, but they are often unwilling to invest a great deal of effort into making them. People want access to a wealth of content, but they can easily get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of content that's available. The last things is that the UX industry has learned that “If you build it, they will come” is not true – people will only come (and keep coming) if it’s built with their needs and preferences in mind.
