I conducted two rounds of interviews for this project. The first round of interviews was to find out the general reasons why they gamble on sports and why they use a mobile sportsbook app. Even though I knew what my problem was when mobile betting, I wanted to investigate and see if others had the same problem or if there were different problems they encountered as well.

I came to find out that my participants encounter the same problem I have by it being too difficult and time-consuming when trying to keep up with the bets they have placed. After placing a bet my participants explained that all of their open bets are shown in their bet slip but when a game they have bet on is live, it only shows the team names and what bet they have placed. To check that bet my participants have to close the application and open up another one to find the score and status of the game and then repeat for all other bets as well.

Another problem I discovered was the difficulty or lack of ability to share a bet they have placed. My participants explained that they enjoy sharing and receiving bets with their friends who also sports gamble as well. The problem is that when my participants want to share a bet they are forced to take a screenshot of the bet on their mobile sportsbook app, then send it to their friends. Another problem with taking a screenshot and sending the bet this way is that sometimes a bet can pass the scroll so multiple screenshots are required to show the entire bet.

After conducting my initial interviews I went back to dig a little deeper to find out more about my participants’ problems and difficulties with mobile sports gambling. My participants explained to me that one of the main reasons they gamble on sports is because it makes games that they would usually not find entertaining, now entertaining to watch. Most of my participants do not place heavy bet amounts but just something small to create that excitement. My participants also said that most of the time when they place a bet they place more than just one. Therefore this creates multiple bets they need to follow and be updated on while live.

When my participants are manually trying to keep up on the status of the games they have bet on they either change the TV channel to each game, open up their ESPN app and scroll through all the game scores to find each game they are looking for or type each game in their web search engine to find the scores. As you can imagine this can be very time-consuming if you have multiple bets that are live at once. This can also take you away from the game you are currently trying to watch.

I was able to create a persona of my target demographic after conducting my initial research and interviews with my participants. Jake Larkin is a 25-year-old man who is single and has a steady paying job. He enjoys watching sports even if it isn’t their favorite team. A lot of his conversations with his friends take place around sports topics as well. He also likes to gamble on games with his mobile application as well to make the viewing experience more excitable. He got into mobile sports gambling because his friends do and it was just recently made legal in the state he resides in.

After conducting my research and interviewing my participants I identified three problems my users are having.

To help me choose which problem statement I wanted to move forward with I used an activity called “Crazy 8’s.” This method is creating eight sketches at a time in a 5 minute time period to help with ideas on how to solve these problems.

I did 4 rounds of Crazy 8’s which produced a lot of good ideas and some that were not. I found that the more I did these the more in detail I became which produced better ideas.

After finishing my Crazy 8’s exercise I decided that I could solve all three of these problems my users are having.

After gathering all of my ideations I created a storyboard that would show how a user would check the status of one of the bets they had placed and then them sharing it with a friend.

I wanted to keep this process as quick and easy as possible for the user so I created this process only using three steps.

I needed to create a user flow showing the user’s path when checking the status and sharing a bet with a friend. I had trouble at first figuring out the right path. In my first user flow I included all of the screen I have listed below except for the “Share Confirmation” screen. I would later add this screen after my first round of testing using my low-fidelity wireframes.

I developed my low-fidelity wireframes using my user flow and created some additional screens that the user would be able to navigate to in the application as well.

With my low-fidelity wireframes done, I conducted my first round of usability testing with the prototype I created. I told my participants that their goal was to find a bet that they had placed, check the status of that bet and then share it with a friend. All of the users’ results were pretty similar. My users all found their bets easily and checked the status with no problem.

Some however did have a problem when trying to share it. Not all recognized the share icon right away. But another common outcome with all of the users was that they said they would have a better sense when testing if the wireframes included color. They explained that with sports scores and betting statuses color is an important factor.

Taking the advice from my users to gain better user testing, I created my high-fidelity wireframes. Here I created the main screens a user would be able to view during navigation. A screen I added to the user flow after my user tests from my low-fidelity wireframes were the share confirmation screen.

One of my user explained that after he chose a profile on the share lightbox to share a bet with, it would just go back to the previous screen. He wasn’t sure if the share went through or if he accidentally closed the lightbox. Therefore I created a share confirmation screen that would appear so the user knows the share went through.

Using the information and feedback I received from my testing I made the following changes to my application.

In my first design, I used a 15 point font size for the team names and scores. I also had a 13-pixel gutter and 13-pixels spacing between each bet row. This bigger font size and spacing cause this screen not to show as much information above the screen as it could be. One of my users also said that this design felt a little big “like it was set to the zoom and bigger font setting iPhones have”.

Because of this, I changed the font size to 13 and the gutter and spacing between bet rows to 7 pixels. This allowed to fit more bets above the scroll and allowed more spacing between information horizontally.

In my first design, I highlighted the user’s bet by placing a white triangle arrow next to the team. I also highlighted the team that was winning in bold. This created confusion during my tests. Most of my users thought that the team in bold was the bet they had placed in their sportsbook mobile app. When the arrow and bold text lined up it didn’t cause as much confusion but when they didn’t I had to explain the meaning to them every time. This was clearly a problem that needed to be fixed.

I fixed this by taking away the confusing triangle arrow and switched the bold text to just the team you have your bet on. I tested this new version and it eliminated the confusion completely.

When testing my users explained that they were a little confused about the sharing feature. In my first design, I had the share feature as a green paper airplane icon like you see on some email apps. Even though this is a common icon for sending something, my users still had problems figuring it out. I think another factor that contributed to the confusion was the icon being green. In my application where I use the color green is for something that is active or a winning bet. This caused confusion because it made the user feel like there was an action needed because of the green.

I found that the solution was by going back to the basics. I used the IOS icon for sharing that people are used to and trained to use when sharing something with their IOS device. This change caused an instant solution when I asked my participants to share a bet they had placed.

To complete the sharing experience for a user I needed to make one more change. In my first version, when the user pressed the share icon and then chose who to share the bet with by pressing the profile image it would then go back to the previous screen they started at with all of their bets. The bet had been shared but it was obvious to the user that it had been. By going directly back to the previous screen, the user thought that they had accidentally closed out of the share option and back to where they began. There was no confirmation for them.

To fix this all I needed to do was add a confirmation screen to give them that satisfaction that the bet was shared. I created a full-screen lightbox that appears after choosing the profile that includes the profile that was chosen and the bet they decided to share for confirmation. This made the whole difference when I went back to my users and tested it again. They explained, “that is exactly what I needed.” Below you can see the transformation.

No Share Confirmation

Added Share Confirmation

When testing I had one user bring up a good point about my navigation icons. He explained that the two left icons looked too similar and that both could be mistaken for the My Bet Slip screen. I agreed and changed the left “Feed” icon to a home icon like most applications to keep familiarity.

I also added text labels below the icons as well so there would be no confusion for users when trying to navigate the application.

I have enjoyed designing this application because this was created to solve a real-life problem I have. I identified a problem that I and others as well have and created a solution. Another contributing factor of why I have enjoyed working on this application so much is that it is in the sports industry. Sports have been and still is a major part of my life.

I have played sports all of my life and continue to watch them religiously whenever they are on. This passion has led me to a new hobby of betting on sports as well. So being able to combine my passion for sports and my hobby of sports gambling has been an enjoyable and educational experience.

For as far as the application, I am pleased with the outcome of my design and creation. As I continue to test this application I am sure there will be many more revisions I will make for the better of the application’s user experience. I am excited to see how this application will turn out in the end.