By designing new features for a classic game, we resurrected a football fan-favorite while creating a new sociability around it.
Client: Showtime Sports
Role: User Experience Designer
From HBO to Showtime
Beat the Insiders is an online “pick ‘em” game where players log in to pick the NFL teams they thought were going to win for the week. The original game called, Beat the Hosts, saw amazing results as a form-driven selection interface with a message board. When Showtime picked up the game’s companion program, Inside the NFL, we were asked to redesign the game for them.
Understanding the Football Fan
We spent a few weeks uncovering the mechanics of the original game, studying what fans really loved about participating. We discovered there was a huge social component to the game – fans loved talking about their picks, their reasoning behind them, and showing off their football knowledge to others. There was also a lot of competition amongst family, friends, and coworkers. It was then that we knew we had to make this game a rich social experience.
The Power of Paper
Several weeks were spent iterating on a paper prototype that was used to help us work with the fluid interactions of the intended experience. By making the experience of “playing” with the prototype tangible, we grasped the nuances of the interactive experience much more clearly than we would have if we jumped right into digital wireframes.
Another benefit was that it was used to engage the client and get them involved with discussing what the experience could be like. The prototype was brought to client meetings and we engaged in a lot of participatory design sessions with them. It was through these meetings that many improvements were incorporated into the design.
Putting together the paper prototype
Prototyping with developers
Showing the prototype to the client
The Interactive Prototype
Once the preliminary game mechanics were finalized, we moved from paper to digital. But instead of designing the usual static wireframes, we decided to try a new interactive prototyping software called, Axure RP Pro.
The rich interactions we were able to execute using Axure were again helpful to engage the client and to more effectively communicate intended experiences to the development team. From simple mouseover effects to more complex conditional interactions, Axure provided us with the right tools to demonstrate the gameplay to multiple levels of audiences.