Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Project Redo : Creative Brief


GRANDSTAND WEB & MOBILE APPLICATION CREATIVE BRIEF

Client: Grandstand LLC, a fantasy football insights and managing website. They differentiate from competitors through a careful and organized approach to design and user interface.

Product/Idea: They're promoting the new Grandstand Website and Mobile application through an animated video of the mocked up website and application. It gives the user a beautiful, visually driven and interactive interface, making the fantasy football experience simpler and more interactive.

Strengths: Simple and intuitive design. Focused on the visual aspect of the user experience.
Weaknesses: Fit more for the advanced, college student aged fantasy football player who's in multiple leagues, checks regularly, enjoys in-depth data and statistics on players.
Opportunities: Fantasy football sites are cluttered with messy, outdated graphics, advertisements, and other information. The design is rectangular and clunky and feels like an excel document. Grandstand is modernized and focused on making the fantasy real.
Threats: Modern, streamline design is catching on, fantasy football is starting to get larger… more attention means this should eventually happen for fantasy football. The clock is ticking.

Purpose: The goal is to produce an animated walkthrough less than 1:30 that showcases the sites capabilities and look and feel. A promo video to quickly convey the idea for potential investors/developers

Competitors: NFL.com Fantasy football, CBS fantasy football, yahoo fantasy football, espn fantasy football, rotoworld.com, rotowire.com

…They're pushing the audience to gamble on daily leagues (set the perfect matchup for the day and win a million dollars),  they're pushing them to play even more fantasy games (weekly pick'em, nfl playoff challenge, thursday night football challenge, predict the pick, nflrush fantasy: FF for kids), they're asking the audience to nominate their favorite players of the week, they're filling them in on expert insights and trends. They are already established and giants in the game.

Audience:

Age: 18-50
Sex: often male, americans
Culture: college educated sports fans playing with close friends, spending a lot of time doing research and keeping updates on their favorite players. They like to interact with the game and customize their team, making transactions and anticipating if their predictions come true or not. It's also a very social activity (everyone wants to tell everyone about their fantasy team) with bragging rights on the line.

Insights:

Quote from article on Ad Age:

"Market research firm Ipsos says 25.8 million people will play fantasy football this year and generate 1.1 billion in revenue...

The typical fantasy player is in a demographic that makes marketers salivate: a college-educated professional, often a male, in his 30s or 40s with an average household income over $90,000, according to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association. He also has disposable income; of the 49% of fantasy users who pay to play, most spend an average of $468 on league fees, subscription advice sites and analytics apps...

25% of fantasy players access the game thru mobile."

Single Most Important Thing: Giving dedicated fantasy football players a deep, visual experience bringing fantasy football to life, while providing a positive user experience to keep them coming back to the site.

Must Haves: 

Mockups of critical screens (both web and mobile)
Beautifully animated walkthrough of these applications

Do's and Don'ts:
Avoid chunky design, think of ways to freshen the data through thoughtful infographics, keep it simple, keep it efficient.


Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Project Re-Do Ideas

1) Continue working on Grandstand - I want to start working on the mobile version.

I'd like to (by the end of semester) have an after effects edited walkthrough of the Grandstand site and mobile applications, to have a really strong digital project in my portfolio.

What I need to design: 
- About 5 new screens showing great infographics (still haven't really incorporated a lot of infographics)
- Mobile version of main screens (probably 10 screens)
- After effects video

2) Playmaker App - Full redo

I'd really like to change the concept of this from a curated gallery of NBA iPhone wallpapers to just a curated gallery of wallpapers. Something a little more broad and not sports themed.

The gallery could have several different genres:

-Minimal
-Abstract
-Planet Earth
-Architecture
-Generative Art
-Collage
-Typography
-Photography

It could be a really simple app that is still linked to social (sharing, submitting, etc.) but emphasizes negative space, fully bled screens previewing the wallpapers, better scrolling, and just generally more beautiful design.

Things to design: (the whole thing)
-Load screen / Main screen
-Screen with all the genres
-Screen for each genre (need a way to scroll down full sized wallpapers, need a way to browse multiple at once)
-Setting your wallpaper from the app
-Sharing / submitting socially

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HOWEVER...


not sure if I need two mobile app designs (I will have Grandstand and the "Playmaker" redo)