CASE STUDY

Product Definition and Roadmap to Manage Pool Players

Industry

Sports & Events

Work Done

Product Discovery, UI UX Consulting,

Challenge

The client wanted to create a digital product that’d make it easy for both the pool players and the affiliates simultaneously.

The existing competition was more focused on creating a centrally controlled amateur pool organizations, and hence there was a gap of innovation to attract/target affiliates.

Hence, a product discovery workshop was held in which their team laid out the preliminary requirements and our team came up with a list of features to be added in the MVP, a plan to accelerate the development process and technology stack that can be used.

Also, our research revealed that the technology used in the industry niche had serious limitations, for instance, the scorecard was updated using a pen and paper and then added into the system for amateur players’ matches. As the primary focus of this new app were affiliates and players, we noticed a huge potential market to explore.

The solution

Self-explanatory design for Players and Affiliates

Simply put, the player persona will vary from an amateur who is looking for a leisure activity to a professional pool player looking to win as many competitions as possible. Hence, the product design must be self-explanatory, booking a pool table must not take browsing through more than 5-6 web screens. Our designers came up with an interactive, minimal product demo along with the work-flow for all everyone, i.e., players, affiliates, etc. The team did well in showing up with entire work-flow in such a short span of time.

Making it easier for a pool player

As mentioned earlier, the current technology used by the competitors is quite amateurish. The new app needs to outplay them in order to get more user registrations. A few of the services that were introduced and enhanced for players are:

Automated scorecards of individual pool match,
Minimalizing the number of steps to confirm participation in a league/tournament,
An option to create a team by a player (Captain), Invite players to join a team in a particular tournament,
Access to the team’s scorecards to its captain,
Easing the process of booking a table for amateurs and sharing their individual scorecards after the match.
Integrating payment systems for easy payment to book a table or participate in a tournament; Integrating Google maps to help pool players locating nearby game zones.
Integrating players’ rankings, league standings, schedule and scorecards from Associations’ data

The proposed model was designed to make the life of a pool player easy. As the players sign-ups increases, a greater number of matches can be scheduled and more tournaments can be organized.

Making it easier for Affiliates and Associations

Affiliates are at the core of this new product. They host tournaments, add pool tables for both tournaments and one-on-one games, call to play, and do much more things. We designed the affiliate access in such a way that it’s easy for them to perform the above tasks and much more by going through minimum number of web-screens. The affiliates can be any group of people such as a billiard organization or federation, or a league operator, tournament director, pool hall owner, or a billiard equipment supplier.

An association is a nationwide group of pool players which organizes pool tournaments/leagues, ranks players, schedule matches and give away prize money. As the associations are more popular in the North America, the app is recommended to host more users simultaneously without any down time.

Futuristic Technology Stack

We recommend using a futuristic technology stack including IoT, Machine learning and Artificial Intelligence. One of our recommendations was to integrate the product with IoT based device for players check-ins. And then increase the scope of using these techs and devices in other areas such as organizing the schedule, maintaining scores etc.

Outcomes

The outcomes of the product discovery session include

Design for a user-friendly app
Specific list of features to be added in the MVP and the ones to be added during scaling
Adding futuristic technologies so that the system can manage more users simultaneously
A detailed roadmap to launch the MVP within 75-90 days