Fall 2016
LDRBRD iOS App
LDRBRD (now Warpstream) is an iOS application targeting youth athletes to create professional, sports highlights in seconds.
The initial goal of LDRBRD was to provide a network between youth athletes and college scouts that would allow athletes to share professional quality sports highlights. Athletes or their guardians could record and time combine events, prepare a video, share, and compare their scores with other athletes.
Problem
It can be difficult for high school athletes to gain exposure with college scouts. Student athletes and parents have difficulty recording, comparing, and tracking progress at combine events.
LDRBRD allows students to create athletic profiles, record and measure combine events, share results, and compare athletes. College scouts can easily network with top high school athletes and quickly fill open slots on teams.
Notebook sketch of workflow ideas
Team
This was a small project with many members wearing multiple hats.
Founder/Business Development/Marketing: The founder took on all of these roles
Branding and Visual Designer: One designer for visuals
Marketing Graphic Designer: One designer for marketing materials
UX Consultant and Design: My role
I worked as a consultant and UX designer for this project. I facilitated communication with the visual designer and worked with assets she produced to build high-fidelity mockups and prototypes. I was responsible for the organization of information and interactions within the application.
Design & Technology
Because this was a very small and limited team, the founder decided to only build this app for iOS to begin with.
The visual designer and I collaborated heavily on color usage, palettes, and fonts. We needed to choose a palette that did not already have a heavy association with existing teams and it needed to be trendy in order to cater to young athletes.
We decided to use a bright pink and orange gradient with a dark interface. The dark backgrounds provided a nice contrast for the bright pinks and oranges used throughout the app.
Fonts were chosen and provided by the founder.
Process
Because this was a small team with very limited resources, we leaned heavily on existing iOS standards and guidelines. The team kept interactions simple to match user mental models and expectations.
The team was able to conduct some basic user research with interviews and beta tests. We used Adobe Illustrator and XD to build out mockups and brand guides
Challenges
The team was small and worked remotely with a limited budget for user research. We weren’t able to validate ideas with interviews, contextual inquiries, or even usability tests. However, we were able to follow iOS UI guidelines as this was a native iOS app and were able to work closely with subject matter experts to determine whether or not we were on the right path..
