Owning a domain
Yahoo! Sports
Role Lead UX Designer | Responsibilities UX & visual design, strategy, product definition, cross-functional alignment
Notable accomplishments
Designed an industry-first mobile Fantasy Football (soccer) experience allowing players to create, draft and compete solely on the device
Designed Yahoo!’s first cash-prize fantasy offerings: Fantasy MLB & NHL
Global installs and engagement 40%+ YoY
App Redesign
To remain a leader in app stores you need to nimbly adapt to evolving operating systems, the technological affordances they provide, and the patterns and visual styles they promote. Our evolution was one of bringing in rich photographic elements, strengthening team affinity, flattening our design and simplifying our UI.
Dynamic, rich and relevant imagery was key. It is no surprise photography has been an important cornerstone of sports reporting as it helps fans feel a connection to their sports and their athletes. With this understanding we had to figure out how to effectively use photographs and where. If we used too many they would distract from the content and become stale. If we used them sparingly we'd risk not having the intended impact.
The end result of this redesign demonstrates a thoughtful and calculated approach to evolve the app in a meaningful and purposeful way.
The challenge: Adapt and evolve while not over-designing and alienating our passionate fans.
As a leader in the Sports app world Yahoo! covers a large number of leagues, sports and athletes but it became clear that our Soccer offering fell below industry standards and would need a full redesign to support our plans for a European launch. Undoubtedly Soccer is the most followed sport in the world, and we knew that those fans would want more than we currently offered. We also knew that it needed to be timely, relevant and visually stimulating.
After many iterations and explorations this work represents the culmination of my design leadership and partnerships throughout our organization, including: the editorial teams in the UK, the engineering group in Bangalore and the Product teams in the US.
The challenge: Create an experience that exceeds the expectations and needs of more savvy and passionate global soccer fans.
The reason: Yahoo! Sports wanted to increase its reach and user-base across globally. We needed to build localized versions of our app for multiple markets but knew we couldn't launch successfully in these markets without a best-in-class soccer experience.
Adding the sport of soccer [football]
World Cup
The world’s biggest sport plays the world’s biggest tournament every 4 years and sports fans around the globe anxiously follow their country’s progress through the group stage matches and, for the lucky few, into the knockout round.
Coming off the heals of our launch in Europe and Brazil we immediately focused our attention on creating an immersive World Cup experience. We wanted them to be able to follow matches, keep tabs on their teams, read news, watch video content from our network of reporters, including exclusive commentary from Jose Mourinho and participate in Yahoo!'s World Cup Pick'em game.
My designs utilized an expansion control to immediately see when the teams you care most about are playing. This, coupled with a slick, panning bracket view, made for a fast, pleasurable and innovative navigational experience.
The challenge: Create a utility for the tournament that provides the most relevant and timely information to a truly global audience through rich content and engaging features and interactions.
The reason: To expand our reach in the global soccer market by building off the success of our multi-national app launch a few months earlier.
Transfer Central
The world’s biggest sport plays the world’s biggest tournament every 4 years and sports fans around the globe anxiously follow their country’s progress through the group stage matches and, for the lucky few, into the knockout round.
Coming off the heals of our launch in Europe and Brazil we immediately focused our attention on creating an immersive World Cup experience. We wanted them to be able to follow matches, keep tabs on their teams, read news, watch video content from our network of reporters, including exclusive commentary from Jose Mourinho and participate in Yahoo!'s World Cup Pick'em game.
My designs utilized an expansion control to immediately see when the teams you care most about are playing. This, coupled with a slick, panning bracket view, made for a fast, pleasurable and innovative navigational experience.
The challenge: Create a utility for the tournament that provides the most relevant and timely information to a truly global audience through rich content and engaging features and interactions.
The reason: To expand our reach in the global soccer market by building off the success of our multi-national app launch a few months earlier.
March Madness
The one multi-day sporting event that draws the attention of more Americans than any other is the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. March Madness pools crop up everywhere and brackets are filled out at a feverish pace. The means with which those brackets are filled out can be less than scientific, and can involve selecting teams based on one's favorite colors or mascots or the compelling notion of a Cinderella team winning it all.
Every year Yahoo! gears up for the millions of people eager to get in on the Madness. This year was made even more exciting with the addition of our $1 billion perfect bracket prize! With this massive prize came a challenging product and design cycle that included many legal requirements, and subsequent revisions, from our partner Quicken Loans.
The challenge: Redesign one of our core fantasy games under tight deadlines and with input from a variety of stakeholders, while adhering to strict legal parameters.
The reason: To up the ante in the March Madness fantasy market and engage a larger user-base with the largest prize ever offered in fantasy sports history.
Fantasy Sports
Before my shift to mobile, I worked on a diverse portfolio of fantasy games for Citizen Sports (Yahoo! acquisition in early 2010) and Yahoo! Sports.
Citizen's core product offerings were socially-powered fantasy games that integrated your gaming world with your friends and opponents on Facebook and Yahoo!. This highly engaging and seamless integration was what ultimately caught the attention of Yahoo!. Our goal was to build a cross-platform product suite dedicated to enriching the fantasy experience.
The games that were the cornerstones of both product lines included Fantasy Football, Baseball, Basketball, Hockey, Soccer and March Madness.
The challenge: Create a fresh look for Citizen Sports that was consistent with Yahoo!'s existing fantasy offerings while congruently designing product features for Yahoo! Sports.
