Making the Unfamiliar Feel Like Home
For the Twin Cities Robert Emmets Hurling Club (TCRE), it’s hard to get people excited about trying out the state’s only organized league for a sport most of us have never heard of. By getting to know the club’s target audience, I started to see how the sport itself was only a small piece of the puzzle. To grow its membership, TCRE would need a new strategy that connected its values to the user experience off the field as much as on.
Roles: Research, Strategy, Design
Methods: Content Audit, Competitive Analysis, Web Analytics, Directed Storytelling, Remote Usability Testing, User Survey, Affinity Mapping, Rapid Prototyping, Guerrilla Testing, Card Sorting, Triading, High-Fidelity Prototyping
Tools: Pen & Paper, G Suite, Zoom, InVision, Miro, Figma, Wix
The Big Picture
Client
Twin Cities Robert Emmets Hurling Club:
Nonprofit sports and cultural organization
Project
Develop a strategy to address plateauing membership rates and support recruitment efforts
Recommendation
Employ a new content strategy in public-facing platforms that connects the member experience with the needs and motivations of target users
Seeing Through Another User’s Eyes
Early research and empathy mapping gave me a glimpse of what TCRE looked like from the outside, as well as ideas for how to sharpen the picture.
To start this project, I had to take a big step backward. As a member and volunteer with the Twin Cities Robert Emmets for over 11 years, I had personal experience with the problem space. Even still, I had to concede that for as well as I knew TCRE as a current user, I had very little idea of what others saw when they looked at us.
Thus, I began by researching TCRE’s place in the overall landscape of adult team sports. Conducting a content audit of the club’s publicly-facing platforms and comparing the results to possible competitors, I noted that TCRE’s heuristic challenges were surprisingly similar to those of other sports leagues. Even something as simple as showcasing the club’s stunning photography and clearing up the registration flow could set its online experience apart.
What other sports leagues didn’t have to contend with, though, was whether or not people would get what their sport was. As I conducted directed storytelling and usability tests with prospective users, the number one question on everyone’s mind was: “What is hurling?” Without the answer to that question, it was hard for anyone to even think of progressing further.
Compiling an affinity diagram of directed storytelling and usability test results to help understand the needs and motivations of the target user and how to better integrate them into TCRE’s online content.
“I’m thinking you guys are way too good for me to join.”
— User responding to the club’s accomplishments in national and international competition as listed on the TCRE home page
A player engaged in a card sorting activity while at the field during a training session. Other activities included triading of image prototypes and getting feedback new feature ideas.
Seeking A Common Language
In developing and testing feature ideas and content themes, I got closer to understanding how to bridge the gap between what target users wanted and what TCRE could offer.
Where prospective users struggled to grasp what hurling was, they were nearly unanimous on what they valued in their sporting experience in general. Though the nature of the game itself was certainly relevant, more than anything users wanted a fun and socially-engaging atmosphere with friendly people.
A survey of current TCRE members showed that its community was its strongest engagement factor. It was a great sign. It suggested that, if TCRE was already offering what target users wanted, they just needed to translate and transmit that value in a language that users would see and understand.
I let my research guide my next steps. The majority of target users cited Google as their main resource for finding new sports leagues. And with over 2,000 new and local users within the prior 2 1/2 years compared to just 94 active members, the TCRE website looked like a prime place to start.
After wireframing a few feature ideas and pulling together some possible navigation titles and image examples, I brought my ideas into the literal field, conducting guerrilla tests with new and established players at a TCRE practice session.
The guerrilla sessions showed me that, apart from having a clear and compelling story to draw users in, the flow through the user’s journey of discovery needed a clear guide. Calls to action had to anticipate the next question and point directly to the answer. And along each step, users needed to be able to see their motivations mirrored back to them in TCRE’s values.
Laying Out a New Direction
Translating low-fidelity wireframes and content ideas into a high-fidelity prototype meant finding a compromise between what users needed and what stakeholders could maintain.
With my content strategy starting to take shape, I moved into prototyping to get a sense of how all of the pieces would work together in context. The design, I knew, would have to be replicable in the Wix website builder that TCRE was using for its current website. Furthermore, with limited time and resources to update or customize an out-of-the-box solution, I had to consider strategies to keep the site looking and feeling fresh with as few updates and relying on as many built-in features as possible.
Layout and design features were only a part of the challenge. Finding images and composing copy that felt realistic was a critical step in seeing how users would respond to the voice, tone, and visual story.
Wireframes of screens from the high-fidelity prototype I tested with target users. Some content and layout choices for certain pages later changed with user feedback.
“I like the wording of this. This is very enticing. I’m probably going to click it no matter what.”
— User in the target group describing a call to action on a button in the new user flow
A low-fidelity draft of the photography strategy used in early user testing (top) and the finalized version (bottom) using examples from TCRE’s extensive photo library.
Documenting a Value System
With usability testing of the prototype site confirming the direction of the content strategy, I laid out the content goals and design system for current and future stakeholders.
A second round of remote testing with target users—this time with the prototype site—indicated that the strategy was on its way to achieving the desired result. Not only were users more successfully completing scenarios that had failed on the current site, but they were demonstrating that they knew and understood more about the sport and the values of the club after a few minutes of perusal.
With these successes in mind, I began to translate my notes into clearly defined documentation to help TCRE stakeholders visualize and understand the goals and justifications behind each design decision. Having the content strategy outlined would give stakeholders the nuts and bolts to make not only the website friendly to prospective users, but any other platform they chose.
Every aspect of the content strategy, from the emphasis on positivity to the emotive imagery, was intended to make first-time users feel as comfortable in the TCRE environment as those who had been a part of the community for years.
As one member said, recalling her first training session, “[the team] invited me to join their social circle before I even committed to playing.” My goal with this strategy was to evoke that same welcome in a digital space. If users felt invited and could see themselves in the experience, then TCRE could get them on the field and let the community do the rest.
Plotting the Next Steps
Applying the strategy to other platforms will expand its reach and provide new pathways for users with limited burden on stakeholders.
Up until this point, most of TCRE’s members had been recruited through active and resource-intensive efforts on the part of stakeholders. The website, with its high ratio of new to returning users, represented an untapped opportunity for passive recruitment. If even a small percentage of new visitors to the site felt motivated by the new externally-facing strategy to try out the sport, and if even a small percentage of those people enjoyed the experience enough to keep coming back, TCRE’s stagnant membership numbers would be stagnant no more, all without the organization’s volunteers having to do anything else.
But I don’t want to stop there. With a strategy flexible enough to expand to other media, next steps include developing guidelines for incorporation into TCRE’s other media: e-mail newsletters, social media, and print materials.
Watch a brief video walkthrough detailing how the website redesign incorporates various elements of the content strategy.
The Takeaway
It’s a challenging and rewarding exercise being so close to a project. Confronting my own biases and expectations about the problem space helped me better understand myself as a researcher. Forcing objective distance into my methods and strategies highlighted opportunities I may never have considered otherwise and made the final product stronger. Caring about the outcome so much that I wanted to make it perfect the first time reminded me that this solution, like any other, is a work in progress.
This time, I just happen to be fortunate enough to be able to keep evaluating and iterating and applying my knowledge and talents to give back to something that has given so much to me.