Matt Bonini

Lead Designer at Disney & ESPN

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ESPN Fantasy

Weekly Celebration Recap

As an ESPN Fantasy user with a fantasy team, it is difficult to find matchup results at the conclusion of a matchup. Fans work hard on their team each matchup all season long. Everything leads up to the conclusion of a matchup and ESPN Fantasy does not do a good job capitalizing on that moment to inform fans and cultivate excitement. Winning should be a celebratory moment. How do we fix that?

Company

The Walt Disney Company

Line of Business

ESPN

Product

ESPN Fantasy App

Role

UI Design, UX Design, Product Stategy

Problem Statement

As a new matchup period begins, fans don't know whether they won or lost their previous matchup and it's too much work to find that information.

Don't know final results

Matchup results buried

Uneventful matchup conclusion

Unaware matchup ended

Not sure where to find results

"Hold up, did I win or lose my matchup last week?!" Did it finish?

"Where do I find my final matchup results from last week?"

"Pretty annoying I have to go digging for my results."

"Figured winning would be more exciting than this."

👎

The fan had to take 5 different steps on 3 different screens just to find their final results from the previous matchup period. It should not be that much work.

How Might We?…

How might we create a fun and exciting way to better inform fans about their final matchup results at the conclusion of each matchup period?

Surface matchup results better

Make it fun (It's a game after all)

Make it exciting & eventful

Make it personalized

Wireframes

The fan should not have to look for their matchup results.

Home Screen

Full Sheet

Modal Overlay

By immediately surfacing fans matchup results in a modal upon opening the app, we significantly reduce the number of steps it took to answer the most important question for fans after the conclusion of a matchup period…"Did I win?"

Before

After

Ideation

How might we make this fun, exciting and personalized? Games are supposed to be fun.

confetti

champagne spraying

sound effects

Motion and animation

strobe lights

cheering crowd

siren

Color & vibrancy

crack of the bat + crowd

basketball net swish

trophy + medal

foam finger

Dynamic, custom headlines

🎉

Confetti is associated with some of the most significant moments and athletes in sports history, winning especially. I wanted to bring those celebratory elements into the experience to replicate that moment and evoke those positive emotions fans feel when winning.

Leveraging the unique brand identities of ESPN Fantasy

Star Yellow

The star yellow is a persisent brand color that is used across each ESPN Fantasy sport logo and this felt natural to apply to the confetti as well.

Sport Brand Colors

Each Fantasy Sport has it's own brand identity color so I leveraged that to brand the celebration experience to each sport.

YOU get confetti, YOU get confetti…but not everyone.

Confetti is reserved for wins only to maintain it's rarity. This makes fans feel like it's special and they had to work to earn it. This gives the fan a surge of positives vibes they come to crave.

🎉 Win 🏆

🧻 Loss 💩

Talk to the fan. Keep things fresh.

Personalization was important to this feature. I collaborated with Product Managment partners to write an extensive list of headlines that would constantly change each time the fan saw this experience. The funnier and snarkier they were, the more it resonated with fans.

Wins

" Hands down, you're the G.O.A.T"

"You da real MVP"

"Print it and put it on the fridge"

"Can't be stopped, won't be stopped"

Losses

"Ouch, that one hurt"

"Lost by the skin of your teeth!"

"Did you even try this week?"

"Sheesh, tough loss"

Fan's were telling us they needed a way to share their matchup results

After initial launch, I noticed a lot of fans were taking screenshots of their matchup results screen and sharing to social very frequently. Even Chris Pratt shared his matchup results against Chris Evans on his Instagram account! ESPN Fantasy did not offer a great way to do this. So, I informed our partners about the opportunity there was here and pitched the concept of generating personalized artwork for each fan to share for bragging rights.

Things we noticed about fan behavior:

Fans found the witty messaging very entertaining

They screenshot the screen to share or brag

Chris Pratt shares to his Instagram!

Just give the fans what they're asking for!

The first step was to introduce a "Share Matchup" CTA. Sharing brings up the fans native share sheet where they choose how and where they want to share.

Design something worth sharing

Referencing user behavior and activity, I intentionally design the artwork to include all of the elements that seemed to excite them. The witty messaging, confetti and colorful palette.

Monetization opportunities became very obvious

Shortly after launch, it became clear there was a great opportunity to monetize this feature to generate revenue. I worked closely with my product partners and Miller Lite to bring to life a strong ad partnership. The whole experience was branded to Miller Lite, down to the confetti and messaging. This resulted in a multi-year, multi-million dollar deal that has Miller Lite coming back year after year.

Multi-million dollar deal

Multi-year returning partnership

The Impact

The most shared in-app content by fans

Fan reception of the feature has been impressive, yielding more than 2 million shares within the first 6 months. It remains the most shared in-app content in the ESPN Fantasy app today. On top of all of that, we made fan's matchup results much more discoverable, bringing it to them rather than the other way around. It started out as a simple way to inform the fan of their matchups results. From there, more opportunities blossomed with sharing capabilties and multi-million dollar ad partnerships.