About 6 months into our time working with the NBA, we scoped and shaped our first 4 month research project dedicated to understanding our international users. The Product team had never done research directly with fans before, so in addition to facilitating the process we had to work with internal stakeholders to set up the end to end experience.

After aligning on what the goals and intent were, we began to involve various internal groups to help make this a reality. We engaged with legal, finance, IT, and marketing teams to draft consent documents, approve incentives, create email accounts for communications, and honed in on an audience through fans that had consented to NBA marketing emails for an invitation to speak.

This all served as the foundation of the research practice at the league, something that was repeatable, teachable and scalable. Not only across internal groups, but for any other vendor the league brought on in the future.

Methodologies

Our time doing research over the next 2 years was frequent and varied greatly in methods. We held moderated interviews with fans in Australia, recruited international participants for diary studies, had sign ups for closed iOS and Android beta groups, conducted guerilla testing in Chicago and Mexico City, surveyed basketball fans in the Philippines, interviewed senior stakeholders, held family and friends feedback discussions and set up intercept testing in the NBA offices with employees.

The Product team became so excited by our work that they felt empowered to go and find additional tools that could be added to the kit. Playbook UX, usertesting.com and other software was added to the list with our team helping provide the necessary prototypes for unmoderated feedback.

Research Outputs

When we first set up necessary operations and processes of UX research, our aim was to construct a picture as best as possible of who was using the products. It gave us all a bit more clarity on who, when and how people were using the products.

Over time as we added more methods and expanded our use of research, we saw the positive impacts on not only our work but our relationship with stakeholders. Decisions were now informed by real quotes and opinions from fans, and they were used by Product to defend the rationale of our choices. This all resulted:

• Personas and archetypes
• User journeys for each persona
• 2x2 matrices of US and Australian sports apps
• Weekly views of devices and planning during key season moments
• Tactical design improvements to screens and flows
• Identifiable areas of opportunity depending on sports fandom
• Clear differentiation of use for web, app and TV platforms
• Informed prioritization of product needs, helping to solidify the roadmap

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