Keeping supporters and the team connected throughout the year

An app that offers the latest game info, coupons, articles and video about the team/players on a subscription model

CLIENT Japanese professional soccer team

Challenge

Help the clients design mobile experiences that provides contents about the team and players throughout the year. Identify a variety of content(blog posts and videos) topics that supporters are potentially interested in.

Solution

An app that can serve as supporters' information hubs and a media subscription service. Supporters can access the latest game stats and coupons available at the stadium and blog posts and videos about players/the team throughout the year.

Impact

Due to COVID-19, the club had been forced to limit the stadium's capacity for spectators between 2020 and 2021 and has experienced difficulties securing financial resources. However, the app has played an essential role in increasing the engagement of fans who can't go to the stadium.

The client team was founded in 1992. It is one of the oldest professional soccer clubs in Japan and has been loved by the local fans. For most of its history, the team has been competing in the J1 League, but they face the challenge of securing an income stream. In addition to sponsors, their primary source of income comes from the entrance fees to the stadium, food and drink, and merchandise. Therefore, the team often faces difficulty in generating revenue during the off-season.

How might we keep the team and supported stay more connected and engaged throughout the year by using the mobile technology?

 

My Role

UI/UX Designer (mainly for premium functionalities)

Organization

IBM Japan

Project Duration

June 2018 - August 2018(in Tokyo)

Collaborators

ADK Marketing Solutions

Diverta Inc.

Outcome

A mobile app that provides the latest game stats and coupons available at the stadium and blog posts and videos about players/the team. Available at App Store and Google Play (Only available in Japan)

 

My role

My primary role was to help them implement content such as articles, photos, and movies to their official mobile app so that the team can charge users using a subscription model. Not to mention the UI design, I also helped design the editorial concepts of the premium contents.

Editorial Concept Design
First, based on desktop research and insights given by ADK Marketing Solutions, we divided our target fans into four segments:

  1. Event Seekers
    Not a fan of the club, but they enjoy going to see the games.

  2. Soccer Experts
    They like to watch the game as they know soccer very well.

  3. Player Lovers
    Fans of individual players rather than the club itself.

  4. Club Family
    Big fans of the club; they go to every single match.

Then, we conducted in-depth interviews with supporters representing each segment and developed insights about what they would expect from the app. Once we gathered insights, we ran the workshop with clients to generate content ideas. Finally, we created the editorial policy for our clients, defining the objectives and goals of this media and what each content will try to achieve.

UI Design
Following the branding guidelines created by Takram, I designed the iOS/Android UI for premium services.

Interviewed one of the Club Families

Interviewed Player Lovers

*This project is press-released, but anything we created during the project is not sharable because of its confidentiality. Sorry!