Smartcoach

(Concept product)

Role
Product Design
Platforms
Web
Date
2023

Skills

Research, Wireframing, Design Strategy, Visual Design

Team

Atakan Bacaksız, Adrian Dubler (Product Manager)

Project Overview

Smartcoach is a web-app that helps amateur football coaches to manage practices and matches.

Project goal

  1. Enable coaches to focus primarily on football strategy and player development rather than event organization
  2. Streamline time management for coaches by reducing administrative tasks
  3. Simplify communication between coaches and team players to minimize coordination efforts
  4. Centralize scheduling and player management to increase overall coaching efficiency

Event management for amateur football teams

We've tried to create an experience that would reduce the time scheduling football events for coaches so they could focus on football instead of scheduling.

We listed the critical challenges for the coaches. All the coaches we interviewed complained about the complexity of using multiple third-party apps to schedule a training session.

Discovery

We surveyed 136 coaches in Switzerland. According to that survey 55% of them were struggling with organization. We interviewed with 10 coaches. 5 of them were picked in the group of struggling with the current methods. We understand that main reason of struggles

The Problem

My PM was an amateur football coach, he told us how they're dealing with scheduling and communicating with players. They were facing challenges such as coordinating schedules, collecting player availability, sharing changes with players, and managing potential conflicts. 100% of the coaches rated effective communication with players as essential. From 136 coaches, 55% of them were struggling with the organizing event by current method. 77% of coaches spend 3-6 hours per week.

Why?

We could help them to quickly complete their paperwork

4 hours per week is a considerable amount of time for a volunteer coach to spend on administrative tasks. This time could be better spent coaching and developing players.

They could stop being repetitive

The functions of scheduling practices and matches, collecting player availability, and communicating changes are all repetitive and frustrating. With one platform they could stop being repetitive for hours.

Coaches could be more efficient

The current scheduling method and managing practices and matches could be more efficient. Coordinating schedules, collecting player availability, and communicating changes are often complex. This can lead to missed practices and games and can be a source of conflict between coaches and players.

55% of the coaches are a considerable audience.

Based on our interviews with coaches, over 50% prefer using a single app to schedule practices and games instead of relying on several third-party apps.

We thought with Smartcoach, the coaches could save time, reduce frustration, and improve the efficiency of the scheduling and management process. As a result, they can focus on their job: coaching and developing players.

Smartcoach can also benefit players. They can log in and accept or decline event invitations, we want to make sure that players notify the coaches that they're attending or not.

Possible solutions

How can we streamline scheduling and managing events for amateur football coaches across all levels of play so that it is more convenient, less time-consuming, andmore efficient for them?

Type of the product

We discussed what type of a product we should design & build to be simple instead of making much more complex then usual method. And, it was need to be done in 8-weeks. So, our finalist were an extension and a web-app, we decided to go with Web-app because it works on Desktop, tablet and mobile.

Get directions to venue

One of the problems from Player's side, teams don't have a fixed place that means every practice can planned to differnt places. We believed with this feature make communication clear.

Player's Rsvp

Each player will be able to provide availability for every event so the coaches can know who's attending. (We discussed a lot of about this feature that should we add or not, then we decided to add because this is amateur football not every player shows up to every session and they have main job.)

Get directions to venue

One of the problems from Player's side, teams don't have a fixed place that means every practice can planned to differnt places. We believed with this feature make communication clear.