Love Means Nothing, UX Means Everything
Improving the PlayYourCourt Platform
PlayYourCourt is a popular online tennis platform that connects players with practice partners, coaches, leagues, and provides video tutorials to support an enriching tennis experience. Over the last decade, participation and engagement in tennis in the US has declined and negatively impacted the sport for current players. Our team of researchers approached PlayYourCourt to improve the online tennis experience, increase engagement, and understand consumer insights.
I was part of a research team to understand PlayYourCourt users on a deeper level, including users on and off the platform seek community in addition to their challenges, motivations, and online community platform experiences.
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I played an active role in the research from start to finish, including: designing the research plan; pitching our plan to the client; preparing the survey and discussion guide; communicating with the client; conducting 20 in-depth interviews, synthesizing results and delivering our results, insights, and recommendations in a presentation to the client and UX design team.
To comply with my non-disclosure agreement, I have omitted and obfuscated confidential information in this case study. All information in this case study is my own and does not necessarily reflect the views of PlayYourCourt.
Note that some slides have been removed for confidentiality purposes
OUR RESEARCH PROCESS​
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REACHING OUT AT THE RIGHT TIME!
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BUSINESS CONTEXT ​
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We met with our client to understand ​the company's business model, current gain points, pain points and business development areas.
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We learned in the meeting that we had reached out to our client just at the right time: he was currently in the early stages of redesigning his website and app with a UX design team.
We were excited to learn that we would be able to collaborate with his design team and present our results, findings and recommendations to his UX team, shaping the website redesign and serving as an integral part of the website and app relaunch.
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As a group, we prepared an agenda with questions and comments for the client to ensure we designed our research effectively, including:
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Requesting any secondary research available: Scott shared with us demographic information on his user-based, including socioeconomic status, geographic locations, gender, and interests.
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Asking about short and long-term business goals in addition to any "burning" questions he had about his user-base: This helped us formulate our research questions and which best method to use to answer such questions.​
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Discussing recruitment strategy: We proposed a multifaceted approach to recruitment, with half of respondents from PlayYourCourt's subscriber-base and the other half non-subscribers for a big picture look at the tennis players look for on and off the PlayYourCourt app. We focused on the tennis players as opposed to any coaches to have a focus.
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BRINGING OUR IDEAS TO LIFE
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THE PITCH
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After getting a clear understanding of PlayYourCourt, we pitched our research plan that synthesized our client's key interests for our project into 3 research questions:
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What motivates tennis players to seek out community and tennis services online?
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What do users look for in tennis services and lessons?
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What challenges and experiences do tennis players have on online platforms?
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How do tennis players incorporate tennis into lives?
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The pitch also included: ​
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Background of the current business needs to bolster why the research questions mattered.
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Recruitment strategy of non-subscribers and subscribers and why having both groups mattered to the research.
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Research methodology and sample to share who we proposed to target and why.
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Research timeline to set expectations on when each stage of the research would be completed by.
CONDUCTING 20 IN-DEPTH INTERVIEWS
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METHODOLOGY​
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In-Depth Interviews
We chose to conduct 20 in-depth interviews to explore and discover what motivates tennis players to seek community and services online to answer our research questions.
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Our moderator guide was broken up into 6 discussions that related to:
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Introduction
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PlayYourCourt subscriber-specific
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Experiences with online tennis communities
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Challenges on online platforms
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Experiences with tennis services and lessons
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Concluding remarks
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I conducted 10 of the 20 in-depth interviews.
WHO TO INCLUDE? ​
RECRUITMENT STRATEGY
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Participants were recruited in different geographic locations in the USA. A screener tool with a brief introduction of the purpose of our research was developed which included questions:
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​How often do you play tennis?
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Do you have experience with online tennis forums?
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Are you a PlayYourCourt current subscriber?
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We reached out to various online communities to obtain a diverse sample, including:
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Reddit Forums (subreddits: r/10s and r/tennis)
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Facebook Groups (Tennis Players in Los Angeles, Seattle Tennis Players and Tennis Players in Florida)
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Tennis Clubs (We posted flyers in over 6 locations in Washington, Los Angeles, and San Jose)
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Our recruitment strategy was successful in attracting a diverse set of participants in 12 states, were 30 to 70 years old, participated in online forums, and played tennis at least once a week. 10 of our participants were subscribers of PlayYourCourt and 10 of our participants were not subscribers of PlayYourCourt.
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IMPACT ON PLAYYOURCOURT ​
FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
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We prepared and presented the report above to the CEO of PlayYourCourt and the design team. The recommendations we prepared helped shape the website and app design strategy of the website, including how tennis players build community and suggested features to modify and implement.
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See the presentation above for a brief look into our findings and recommendations.
WHY DID IT WORK?
REFLECTION
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I was thrilled to collaborate with a tennis platform that is forward-thinking and mission-driven. As an avid tennis player and hobbyist myself, it was exciting to research a sport I am so passionate about and interview fellow tennis players.
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What would I do next time? We recruited without incentives which was a challenging experience. Participants flaked often and it was difficult to keep participants engaged. We had a total of 9 participants flake or not show up to interviews. This cost us time and energy. I found that the key to keeping participants engaged without the incentives was lots of gratitude and building rapport from the first interaction onward. The participants who did participate were intrinsically motivated to help us due to their love for tennis.
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Why was I essential to this project? I took a proactive approach to this project by reaching out to PlayYourCourt for this project via LinkedIn. I also grew up watching and playing tennis, so I was able to share my knowledge of tennis to my co-researchers to bring them up to speed and offer context on the sport.
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How are PlayYourCourt subscribers going to benefit from this research? Nonsubscribers and Subscribers of PlayYourCourt will benefit greatly from our research. We included both evaluative and foundational findings in our research report that will help drive the UX design team's strategy to revamp the website and app. Not only did we find ways to improve existing app features, we also gained a better understanding of how and why tennis players build community which inspired us to think of new potential features that will bring PlayYourCourt to the next level.
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