MY ROLE
Product Designer
TOOLS
Sketch
Invision
TIMELINE
2-month project
TEAM
1 Designer (me)
1 Engineer
Overview
During the late fall of of 2017, a friend that works for the PulpMX Network (a motocross media company leading the industry in videos, podcasting, internet radio, and journalism) informed me that the PulpMX brand was going to take a leap in the fantasy motocross space.
I asked to design this product which would immediately be a leader in the industry. It would be a two-man team, me the designer and my buddy the developer. We had less than a month for designs and two months to launch.
About PulpMx
PulpMX exists as an informed, fan-driven Pro Motocross and Supercross site where objective editorial and entertaining racing-centric discourse flourish.
Brief & Approach
This project was a non-traditional, two-person team while moonlighting in the evenings. Together we designed the game concepts and rule sets, and I designed the website and web app. The brief was a shared notes document. Communication was primarily through text message.
I designed the interfaces using Sketch and upload to Invision for the developer and he would grab code snippets from there to ensure consistency early in development. Due to the team size and the timeline of less than one month, we abbreviated many steps of the process and condensed as much of the design process as we could. The website was designed with Bootstrap to ensure a great experience across all device sizes.
Details
To ensure design and brand consistency, the website was design on a bootstrap grid with final mockups provided for web, tablet, and mobile.
Outcome
Image: @adamcianciarulo, a motocross champion, setting his fantasy lineup before a race — a completely surreal moment to have a professional racer playing the game you helped design 😍
The soft launch of the site was on time in early December 2017. The full product launch occurred three weeks later with the first Supercross race. This is a complete game changer, offering functionality no one else in the industry is offering: live practice video feeds, live lap timing, and real-time score updates during the races.
PulpMx Media Group’s goal for paid players in the first year was 1,000 users - this goal was absolutely smashed and a year later the player base grew to 7,000+; 7+ years later and the game is still thriving.
Kick-off
01 — Competitive Analysis
There are only two competitors in the fantasy motocross space: RMfantasy.com and motocrossfantasy.com. Both seem to follow design principles from a decade (or more) ago, only one is made responsive for mobile devices, and both have very complicated rule sets.
RMFANTASY SX analysis
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Out of Date Design
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Too Many Ads
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Advertiser-focused
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Too many CTAs
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Information Overload
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Unable to Follow Live Race Laptimes
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Free to Play or Pay to Play
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Responsive Design
MOTOCROSS FANTASY analysis
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Out of Date Design
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Too Minimal
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Team Selection Unclear
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Unable to Follow Live Race Laptimes
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Free to Play or Pay to Play
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Not Responsive
02 — Goals
Create a modern fantasy experience that is best in class for not only the motocross industry, but the fantasy industry as a whole.
Other gaps we discovered were live lap times and race positions, and the ability to chat with other members of the league in real time. The fantasy motocross competition does not have any live race updates during the events, and they leave the converastions to social media and message boards. We wanted to go after these two large gaps while making the experience and usabilty top notch.
Design
03 — Designs
From the outset, we wanted a design that would be easy to use on desktop as well as mobile. We opted for a dark, modern design with clean typography, and high-vis colors to work with the theme.
Dashboard: View of Team, Live & Season Scoring, Chat Panel, Race Info, etc.
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Dashboard: Race live-timing, active position, etc.
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Marketing landing page
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