Over four weeks, we leveraged varying research and Experience Design methods to swiftly tackle a business problem and generate a valuable solution for Formula E and their fans.
Through our efforts, our team landed on adding an onboarding experience for the Formula E mobile site, offering an efficient way to introduce new young fans to the mechanics of the world’s most electrifying motorsport.
As a Researcher, I played a crucial role in designing surveys and interviews, analyzing collected data, and extracting valuable insights.
As a copywriter, I created clear and concise copy to communicate our weekly progress and iterations to our classmates and teaching staff.
For the final versions of the prototype, I utilized a combination of Figma prototyping and Adobe After Effects to create engaging video mockups.
I also want to note that our team operated collaboratively, with each member seamlessly contributing to different aspects of the project.
In the initial weeks of our project, we quickly explored the world of Formula E. Understanding the intricacies of this unique motorsport was crucial to inform our decision-making process and generating quick solutions.
Our team thoroughly researched and uncovered various aspects of the Formula E brand, including its core concept, value pillars, business strategy, attributes, stakeholders, and touchpoints.
We started by observing official Formula E races on YouTube to experience the dynamic motorsport environment ourselves. It was a fun but very confusing watch.
We also scoured social media platforms such as Reddit and Twitter to get an initial insight into how the online community felt about this electric motorsport and found many comments similar to our own experience and overall frustration with the official website of Formula E.
Furthermore, we found multiple articles criticizing the new Electric Grand Prix for their lack of brand identity and constant comparison to their gas counterpart F1.
The team initially contemplated a complete redevelopment of the Formula E brand. However, we recognized the project’s scope was outside our timeline and realized the potential value in addressing the existing issues with their website instead.
We conducted targeted interviews and surveys to narrow our research focus and obtain specific insights regarding the Formula E website.
Finally, after endless hours of research, our team decided on a business problem, a “How Might We” statement and a potential intervention we would use to Ideate, Prototype, Test, and Iterate on for the next few weeks.
New viewers of Formula E are overwhelmed by the cognitive overhead of the unique gamified race mechanics like “Attack Mode” and “Fan Boost,” and their lack of knowledge about the teams and drivers makes the overall experience confusing and intimidating.
How might we showcase and surface the competitive nature of Formula E to new viewers to create long-lasting brand engagement?
Our team proposed the development of a dedicated microsite for Formula E, independent from their main website. This service would utilize cookies to identify first-time visitors and offer a prompt to navigate them to our microsite for an enhanced user experience.
Where would this product land?
Why would people click on it?
Why are we recreating things that already exist?
It would be difficult to convince new fans to visit our microsite when the original website is confusing enough as it is.
All this new content that our team was creating was derived from existing content which would be redundant and only confuse new fans.
Our target audience was also not specific enough to give us a clear goal of what the intervention would provide.
After getting feedback, we decided to recontextualize existing Formula E content directly into the official Formula E website as an onboarding experience.
This decision would directly tackle the business problem of high cognitive overhead, and narrowing our target audience to Gen Z motorsport fans allowed us to refine our approach.
This shift influenced our final intervention design choices, emphasizing short-form videos and prioritizing a mobile version.
By tailoring our solution to meet the preferences and habits of our target audience, we effectively created an onboarding experience that resonates with the next generation of motorsport enthusiasts.
First time visitors of the current Formula E website are overwhelmed with the wall of information creating a gap between the business and the customer.
Our solution is to reduce this cognitive overhead by presenting Formula E in an immersive and digestible way.
Discoverability is now accessible for new Formula E fans.
Using cookies, the Formula E website determines if the site visitor is a first-time viewer, directing them to our newly designed onboarding intervention.
New potential fans are welcomed with an exhilarating onboarding experience that utilizes existing Formula E content and recontextualizes them into short-form interactive videos inspired by the popular social media app TikTok.
Interactive hotspots were strategically placed throughout the videos to further explain race jargon and reinforce their meaning while keeping viewers engaged with the experience.
We incorporated scrubbing functionality, enabling users to flexibly skip sections and navigate the content. Additionally, interactive hotspots were strategically placed as grey points to ensure viewers did not miss essential information.
To enhance user experience, a progress bar was implemented on the left side, providing constant visibility of their progress throughout the onboarding process, emphasizing that the experience has a clear endpoint.
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