Digital Scorebook Manager
Over a seven-week time frame, i've designed a full digital scorebook manager app from start to finish. throughout this process, i've had a detailed schedule from week to week and have a large number of different artifacts from the project.
Below is a detailed list and summary of these artifacts and the overall process i've gone through making this application.
Blog Post 1 | The Importance of a Project Proposal
To kick off the project, I began by crafting a comprehensive project proposal. This included conducting thorough research to understand the challenges fans face when keeping score at a ballgame, as well as uncovering both what motivates them to keep score and where they find enjoyment in it. Using these insights, I developed a clear roadmap outlining the steps, timeline, and resources needed to bring the project to life. The proposal not only served as a valuable reference for my client, but also allowed me to gain a deeper understanding of the project’s scope and refine my approach for execution.
Week 1: The Project Proposal
Blog Post 2 | The Creative Benefits of Project Management
With the project proposal outlining the app’s needs and approach, I moved forward with developing a comprehensive project plan to follow along with. My goal was to ensure every aspect of the projects scope was captured, from key deliverables like wireframes and prototypes to supporting materials such as my production journal and bibliography. This meticulous planning not only helped organize my workflow and clarify the creation process, but also provided me with greater flexibility in the creation of this project compared to ones where I’m more so just “winging it”.
Week 2: The Project Plan
Blog Post 3 | Researching the Competition
With the planning phase complete, I dedicated my third week to in-depth research, focusing on areas such as visual exploration, competitive analysis, user interviews, and empathy mapping. I started by conducting visual research and creating a competitive analysis to gain insights into both the aesthetic direction I wanted to go for with the app, as well as other key features similar apps provide their users. Armed with this information, I then conducted three user interviews with a diverse group of potential future users of the app. Each interview was thoroughly documented, along with corresponding empathy maps, to ensure a deeper understanding of user needs and experiences, as well as an easy source to reference later on in the project.
Week 3: User Research
Week 4: Information Architecture and Persona’s
Blog Post 4 | Narrowing the App’s Focus
With a clearer understanding of my user base and their needs, I then began focusing on distilling these concepts down to what would become the apps core features. In the first half of the week, I created five diverse personas, each representing different user profiles with unique goals, frustrations, and preferences related to keeping score at a baseball game. This helped me ensure the app would cater to a wide range of users. In the second half, I developed a comprehensive information architecture that outlined the app's core features and navigation structure. During this process, I expanded the app's scope beyond basic scorekeeping to include a community feature, allowing users to share scorecards and engage with one another.
Full information architecture
Week 5: Wireframes
Blog Post 5 | Wireframing a Tablet
With a good amount of research under my belt now, I moved into the design phase during week five. The first step was creating the main navigation screens, all of which focused on the most essential and straightforward elements of the app. This includes a page to easily create a new scorecard, a collection of your previous scorecards, an options menu and the community features hub. From there, I designed whatever additional screens came about as needed, ensuring every interaction led to a unique, purposeful screen or transition. By the end of the week, I had developed around 20 screens, along with key features such as the interactive scorecard and a sample navigation bar.
Blog Post 6 | Detailing an App Interface
At the start of this week, I actually needed to play catch up on color and typography studies, which had been pushed back due to the extended time spent refining wireframes. Luckily, due to how I planned out the plan for this project back in Week 2, I had actually planned ahead for this, which allowed me to still complete the color and type studies in a efficient and high quality manner. Once that was completed, I moved on to building a fully functional prototype. For much of the design, I applied colors to the secondary elements from the wireframes. I also incorporated valuable feedback from a critique from a fellow peer who I was showing off the project to, expanding the profile feature to offer more customization options. This update allowed users to personalize their profiles further and share items like baseball cards, memorabilia, and ticket stubs.
Week 6: Prototype
Week 7: Wrap Up
Blog Post 7 | Making an InVision Prototype
In the final week, my focus was on wrapping up the project. This included completing the bibliography, making final adjustments to the app, and uploading all the final deliverables. The adjustments were primarily focused on refining details like leading, spacing, and ensuring smooth, intuitive interactions without any dead ends. Overall, the project made significant progress over the course of these seven weeks, while also teaching me a great deal about project management and self scheduling/motivation. With how it was designed, the project also leaves room for future enhancements and expansions, allowing these ideas and practices to be even further refined.
