Services
User interface design
Interaction design
Information architecture
Illustration
Animation
Tools
Figma
Principle
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Photoshop
Jitter.video
Timeline
August 2021 - Ongoing
HelloSports in an intrapreneurial venture launched by Signa Sports United (SSU), a subsidiary of SIGNA AG, one of Europe’s largest real estate investment firms. The company’s main offering is a mobile app that aims to incentivize its 10k+ users to maintain active lifestyles using the following methods:
HelloSports users track their fitness activities using their device of preference. The HelloSports app, which syncs with most major fitness trackers and apps, automatically rewards users with points that can be exchanged for vouchers redeemable in a number of SSU-owned shops, allowing for potentially huge savings on sports gear on the user-side and increased revenues on the business-side.
I was brought on to an experienced team of two (at the time, a marketing director and a product owner) to head up the interaction and marketing design efforts, both of which would turn out to be fairly substantial. It was my first time working with an internal startup and I was particularly excited to find out if the ample experience of my team members could offset the abundant chaos characteristic of early-stage start ups. The brand and design system were outsourced to a design agency, and using the resulting assets I was to design the flows and user interfaces (UI’s) of whatever features the product owner specified. There was no formal (or informal) discovery process, a decision that for independent startups would typically be quite risky. While an argument could be made that HelloSports was created for the sole purpose of targeting a pre-identified, -researched market, with which its parent company already does business, I am highly skeptical of the decision to completely forego product discovery and believe strongly that it should be continuous throughout the lifecycle of a project.
In my opinion, stumbling through the first steps of a new project is an important and, frankly, unavoidable learning experience for any product team and is doubly so for new team members who are still getting a feel for the project landscape.
Before designing each feature, the product owner would present an opportunity—for example, “we want to increase user engagement by creating community features,”—in-person to the rest of the product team, from which we would brainstorm solutions. I would create a user journey, to make sure we had a shared understanding of the context, before moving into the production phase. We tested a few approaches, initially creating rough sketches before moving into Figma for high fidelity mockups, but once we configured the design library in Figma we realized how much faster it would be to skip the sketching step altogether.After creating high-fidelity mockups, the development team would build them into actual features in the app. No user testing took place, I believe, to the app’s detriment.
I am generally very wary of the largely obsolete waterfall approach to project management because it leaves very little room for user input and hinges on the assumption that everything will be done perfectly the first time around, which is very rarely the case. Design should be iterative and incorporate user input in every iteration. It is important, however, at least in my view, to know the limits of the change you can effect on a given project and to pick your battles accordingly.
In addition to user interface work, I was tasked with designing all of HelloSport’s marketing assets, particularly branded social media posts and stories, in cooperation with the company’s performance marketing freelancer. These tasks were fairly straightforward, mostly relying on tools that I have long been familiar with, but presented occasional opportunities to try out new ones. Working with HelloSports was ultimately a fantastic, new experience that helped me reframe the way I think about startups. I enjoyed working with such an experienced team and the peace of mind that brought with it. As with any project, there were differing opinions among the team about how to approach certain aspects of the project, but overall we all worked very well together and the project went smoothly.