Research

First, we need to understand what the user’s thoughts are. Originally TennisPAL had five tabs Moments, Calendar, Coach, Find Pal, Court. Moments consisted of tennis news and an Instagram feed-like stream of posts from friends and local coaches. The calendar tab was intended to keep track of dates with friends as well as coaching sessions. Find Pal tab was intended to find fellow users in the local area along with such features as radius, age, and skill level. Coach tab was designed to find a coach, the app would ask users to record themselves, send footage of the player on the court, have the coach critique the student. The court tab was designed to find courts and give the user routes to said court.

I conducted in-depth interviews with 25 users to gain an understanding of their needs as well as storyboarding possible outcomes of users. The results from the research were shocking, the main concerns were that the users had was that the user interface was difficult to navigate, as well as things that are simple in most apps were not present in TennisPAL. which lead me to my first wireframe.

Pink = Neutral - Positive Green = User Name Orange = Problem or Issue Blue = Suggestions

Wireframe Version I

After the first run of interviews with users, I decided to sketch lay out to TennisPAL

What I Did

The search bar implementation when looking for a pal, coach, and redesign the court search bar. I rearranged the button placement within chat, coach, calendar, and pal. I added the video feature on the profile of Coaches and Pals so users can gauge their improvements. I implemented a more intuitive interface on courts and offered more options of courts when typed “Courts near me” I’ve added a more intuitive motion to the navigation button as well.

Wireframe Version II

After finishing this first version I gave this to my users. They pointed out flaws in my design and gave me great suggestions. I redesigned the app again most drastically and more confidently this time, version 2.

 What I Did

The inclusion of coach ratings and verification check so users are now able to see how well-received and popular a coach is. As well as an action button, the active button indicates whether the player is online or not, this makes the process of a pick-up tennis match easier and seamless, which would be a big function for casual users of the app.

Final Design

After version 2. I received more feedback from my users. I made a final edited version.

Courts Tab

I deleted the Moments feature from the app. I want more of a focus on the TennisPAL hashtag as well as having coaches post videos of their students before and after sessions, to show their students improvements. The hashtag would funnel more users from Instagram & Twitter to TennisPAL. As you can see, I removed the original search bar, and I made a search bar for courts, a user-friendly design and familiar to users I also implemented location sharing, so the app would be able to suggest the closest open courts to the user, something I noticed that was missing in the earlier version.

Navigation Tab

Using the navigation tab on the app was very clunky and not very intuitive to how most users usually interact with these buttons. The goal was to have a fluid and smooth transition from one page to the next.

Pal Tab

My goal was simplicity and ease for the user, I implemented a search bar to find fellow users by name. Previously there was only radius, age, gender, and skill level. I also implemented the Active button, which is represented by the blue circle, a tool that’s purpose is to show if a user is currently on the app or recently on to make pick-up tennis matches (which is a big part for casual users) easier and seamless to make. The goal of this app is to meet new people and build connections through the sport of tennis the many users I interviewed did not enjoy the moment tab mentioning such things as “it was clunky” and “I’m here for tennis I don’t need a second Instagram” my goal was to simplify the app and elevate what features already existed making the experience of the user enjoyable. I implemented bios in the user’s profile to make the app feel more like a community instead of just the player’s availability and skill level.

Coach Tab

I resized the zip code and gender and made the Find Coach button more user-friendly. I wanted to it be accessible. I implemented a rating system for coaches and a review page for users to look at reviews so that after the session users can rate their coaches and gives more of a community feeling to the app, as well as training videos during the first session before users would be instructed and a video of the student’s improvement after the session. I’ve also created bios for coaches so users on different platforms can still keep in contact with their coaches and use their hashtags I implemented a verification check, the check shows users that certain coaches are popular on the app. My goal for the coaches was to give more information about them and help users make the right choice and ultimately have users enjoy and feel comfortable choosing their instructors.

Calendar Tab

I simplified the calendar app. by clicking days it makes events for the user. I added a user-friendly schedule button, and improved on the original button placement, that the users didn’t prefer. To keep in line with the brand of TennisPAL I added a transparent tennis ball to dates where events take place, as well as small details such as this throughout the app to keep up the TennisPAL Brand, as well as making TennisPALs a welcoming fun community for all users.

Final Interview

Once I finished my redesign of the app I made a basic prototype and gave it to each one of my users to see what they thought on the app. The Search for Pals as well as Coaches improved 100% it became much simpler finding friends and coaches now due primarily to the new search bar. All twenty-five users mentioned a drastic improvement due to the search bar. 75% of the users mentioned that the removal of the moments feature was a great choice and that the app felt more focused and simple to use after the removal of moments. As well as a 90% improvement of the app overall. I enjoyed fixing the user’s problems it was nice to see such a huge improvement when working with users.

My Experience

TennisPAL is the first project done completely by myself. It was myself and twenty-five users I interviewed it was a challenge, I had no senior to rely on for guidance. I’ve done much smaller things like making a website with a partner, and Code Builder in a three-person group, but this was completely by myself. The project took me three weeks to complete and I’ve learned so much, I learned to use Figma & Sketch with such ease at this point. I’ve gotten my hands dirty in Photoshop and Illustrator, I went through a ton of pens writing down each user’s experience and wireframes. This has been my first experience with an established app, this is experience has taught me to think critically about layout colors and Company Brand it was such a fun time I loved putting all these pieces together.

I love TennisPAL this whole project is out of love for the sport of tennis. I focused on trying to make TennisPAL feel like a community on the internet where people can message each other and have bios and have reviews. I wanted to make people getting to know each other through the app okay and difficult, I wanted to unite people through the sport of tennis. This was an excellent experience I’m so grateful to have had this opportunity, I may make more edits to the app in the future. I enjoyed being a part of this.