athlos

marketplace mobile app

Athlos has been designed for a Mexican startup who needed to develop a marketplace for swimming competitions in order to improve the communication between all of the users involved: swimmers, coaches and organizers.

background

The Mexican startup saw the opportunity to become leaders in the digitalization of sports businesses due to the difficult experience associated with publishing, registering, and paying for a swimming competition in Mexico.

With this idea in mind, they started making some investigation on their own.

problem

The startup did a previous research and ensures that, currently in Mexico, there is a very basic and rudimentary way of processing data for registration, accreditation and payment at large sporting events, where a lot of paperwork and inefficient procedures are generated.

results of their research

organizer

- Publish several times the same content in different platforms.
- Payment reconciliation effort is doubled.
- Effort of 3 days of work to copy records.
athlete

- Lack of a central search facility.
- Uncertainty and insecurity when it comes to paying.
- Lack of performance monitoring.

solution

why a marketplace?

greater visibility

It helps all organizers to show their competitions in just one platform and it allows athletes to have a greater overview of the different options.
simple registration

By centralizing all of the swimming competitions in one platform, there is only one simple registration form.
safety payment

The simple form registration contains a secure and verified payment system.
monitored results

This platform keeps record of the personal and other athletes results in every competition. This helps swimmers to make analysis and create strategies for improvement.

design process

With this background and information, the startup decided to hire our UX design team to carry out the marketplace development.

01

RESEARCH

02

ARCHITECTURE

03

UI DESIGN

01 research.

My team and I did several interviews to the users involved in order to identify the problems. We also did benchmarkings on similar marketplaces so as to optimize the site and improve the experience for all the users. We did an effort to understand user's emotions, pain points, and interactions from start to finish through a user journey map.

benchmark

Highlighted features:

Athlete Results Guide
Data collection forms with user-friendly and interactive flows
Detailed event information
Advanced search and navigation filters Fast and secure registrations and payment gateways

user definition

After several interviews with the Mexican startup, we identified 4 types of users that would have interaction with the marketplace: organizer, coach, adult athlete and parents of young athletes.

In order to create a platform that would satisfy every user, we carried out questionaries and interviews that helped us later on to create our user personas and user journey maps.

user personas

organizer

Seeks to promote sporting events through various communication channels to attract athletes.
Problem: few platforms for publishing competitions, and the registration process is messy, causing athletes to fail to successfully complete their registration or even lose interest in participating.
Objectives: to generate recognition and visibility for the events through a platform that promotes trust and loyalty, as well as a simple, clear, and dynamic registration process to retain athletes' interest and even promote popular dissemination.
coach

Seeks to help each athlete to improve their swimming techniques and personal bests through training and competitions.
Problem: difficult to find different competitions throughout the year. To discover new competitions, he/she must join Facebook groups or the Ministry of Sport's website, which generates, on the one hand, a bit of mistrust, and on the other, frustration due to old and unintelligible websites.
Objectives: to find a platform that brings together the largest number of competitions, divided by category and proximity. He/she also seeks to have all the statistical information for each athlete and team in one place to quickly analyze progress.
athlete

Seeks to register for a competition on its own to contribute to their training.
Problem: find it difficult to find a variety of competitions; he/she must seek out other means for events that suit his/her needs and appropriate testing opportunities.
Objectives: find a platform that builds confidence and motivates him/her to improve with each participation.
Young athlete parent

Seeks to register his/her child in a secure competition.
Problem: little information about who organizes the events and what they entail.
Objective: to be certain about where his/her child will be attending, what competitions are being promoted, what values are being applied, who they will be interacting with throughout the event, and what safety measures are in place. Ultimately, he/she is looking for more information about the event and its surroundings, and, to a lesser extent, technical information about the events and results.

02 architecture.

After the analysis of the information, we decided that the best approach for the app would be a linear architecture, as it would allowed users to reach their goal in an organized way, without missing steps.