Full Study

PROBLEM
How can we use technology to ‘be present’ in the moment and with the people you are with? We began investigating how to create meaningful, in-person relationships and interactions between people via technology.

PROCESS
Technical Requirements: Technical requirements: use React.js, an SQL Database, and Node.js/express for the backend.

We began with several ideas for how interactions IRL could be made better using basic internet technology, one of which was a way to interact in a bar/restaurant/pub setting, where there would be a mix of known associates, strangers, and close aquaintences. We talked about finding ways to integrate a typical chat function and online ordering website into an evening experience, such as using your phone to request drinks, order your food, or communicate with other patrons. We described the similarities between this and the “telephone bar” in which we could all vaguely remember hearing or seeing somewhere, but not remembering where. A History of the Telephone Bar (hint: it’s from seeing cabaret too many times-”The telephone song”)

As we explored the idea, it felt too abstract, so we wanted to create a game that would pull people together (friends and strangers alike) to have a shared experience while out at the bar. One team member suggested a “penny bet” game that he had played in which opponents bet pennies on what the next play would be in a series (American football). This sounded promising, as it was exactly the type of low stakes/high engagement activity we were looking for.

The challenge was now how to create a “penny bet” app that is extremely easy to learn, low cost (time and money), that allowed for the most engagement IRL with other patrons who are playing the game.
One major constraint in the process was that our team of three was to be responsible for conceptualizing, designing, building/developing both front and back end, and testing within 4 weeks.

Once we settled on the “penny bets” approach, we started working through the game play logic.

PERSONAS

Our team began thinking about our typical users and how might we address their needs. After brainstorming user stories, we created two personas to focus our UX efforts.

Josef

Male, Late 20s-Early 30s  
Into watching sports on the weekends (or not, he’s not obsessed). He likes to pay attention to the game with his friends, but finds games between teams he’s not familiar with boring. He wishes there were some way to get involved with his friends when they are watching games he is not excited about.

Kacey

Female, Late 30s-Early 40s  
Constantly has friends over for parties and frequent game day events. Her husband likes to play fantasy sports, and she has been around football all her life; however, she is not very interested in watching the games her husband enjoys. She would like a way to enjoy watching the game as much as her guests. She like board games, and tries hard to find new and interesting games for her friends to play when they come over.

USER FLOWS

Thinking through the player's journey, it seemed pretty straightforward: guess the next play, hit a button to guess, wait while the play is in progress, and then wait for the house to compute your score.



As we began to investigate how each player interacted with the house, it became clear that everyone would have to adhere to a strict timeline of events (ie, the player could not place bets while the ball is in play; the scoring can only happen after the play is run; progression in gameplay is rigidly defined by the snap of the ball, etc).

We developed the user journey more concretely to define how the player and the house both interact with the football game, to create a more complete picture:

And then:

PROTOTYPE

With user flows in hand, we built a prototype in AdobeXD to ensure that we were all envisioning the same product and to find out where there might be hang-ups.



RESULT