Basketball Scorekeeping App + Mobile Web APP
ABOUT THIS PROJECt
I’m a passionate recreational basketball player, and have worked for many years to harness technology to provide a superior user experience for the players in our league’s 3 divisions and 22 teams.
Some of the processes involved in running our league were still manual - including game scorekeeping. Our teenage volunteer scorekeepers were still using printed scoresheets and manually recording the scores during the game (in addition to operating the score clock). This is an error-prone process, and after the game the scorekeeper needed to mentally add up the scores for each player and each team.
After the game, the winning captain had to manually enter the player scores into our league website (a SAAS / software as a service website). That process was also time consuming and involved some mental calculations (it wasn’t a very good SAAS for basketball leagues - hence the need for me to create a custom solution). This Mobile app allows the scorekeepers to use their smartphone to record the scores during the game the game, and have the scores automatically entered into our league website via their API. This app is currently in the prototype stage.
WHAT I DID ON THIS PROJECT
I conceived the idea for this app. I was the User Experience Designer and the Visual Designer for both the iOS App and the Mobile Web App. I built the database and did all the coding for our FileMaker Go App that runs on iOS App. I contracted a vue.js programmer to build the Web App. I was the Project Manager, Lead Tester and I did in-field usability testing.
WHAT I LEARNED ON THIS PROJECT
I originally conceived of this app as a tool that team captains could use to make it easier to take the manually recorded scoresheet results and enter them into our (less than stellar) SAAS website. But after designing and prototyping that app, I pivoted to create a tool that the scorekeepers could use to capture the data during the game. These teens grew up with a phone in their hands, and have almost NEVER done anything with pencil & paper (let alone the dreaded mental math ;-) The resulting design dramatically improved the experiences of three groups: the team captains, players in the league, and our volunteer scorekeepers.
This pivot expended the project by a factor of at least 10x, and because our league is a non-profit, I did all my work pro bono. (Over 2000 person-hours and counting ;-) . Luckily the league was able to pay our vue.js programmer (cause that’s not in my wheelhouse!)
