Building Native Apps for iOS and Android to Meet the Growing Needs of Basketball Fans
In collaboration with the German award-winning agency D/UNIT responsible for the overall concept and visual design, we brought the new app to life within four months, right before the Euroleague Basketball season 15 started. Keep reading to learn the details.
Industry
Sport
Services
Full-cycle development
Team
Product owner, Business analyst, Lead engineer, 3 developers, QC lead, QC engineer
Results
Productized consulting business
Web apps are on a downtrend – native solutions wanted
Initially, Turkish Airlines had a mobile-optimized web application for users to get updated on the Euroleague matches and read the latest news. However, as the mobile environment kept changing, fans started requesting new features to not only read the game updates, but also watch basketball matches directly from their devices. The web app couldn’t meet this demand, but it wasn’t the only problem. The legacy app wasn’t compatible with new-generation devices, which resulted in numerous bugs and user frustration.
Acknowledging the changes in the tech landscape and increasing user demands, Turkish Airlines decided to bid farewell to their legacy application and build native versions of Euroleague mobile app for iOS and Android. They chose Modeso to handle the development part and D/UNIT for UI/UX design. Here’s what our collaboration looked like.
The old Euroleague mobile app
Brainstorming and architecture design
Together with D/UNIT, we kicked things off with a creative workshop at Euroleague’s HQ. We planned the app architecture based on the client’s requirements and conceptualized the app navigation.
As a result, we created an information architecture with an off-canvas menu that would ensure basketball fans would easily find the right type of content fast.
The first app version had to be deployed within four months, before the start of the new Euroleague Basketball season. As we didn’t have much time to conduct thorough market research, we decided to ask basketball fans what features they would like to see in the future app directly and built a survey app.
Prioritizing features with an interim survey app
As we were short on time for audience research, our team came up with an idea to create an interim app with a survey poll for basketball fans to vote for the most valuable features. Here’s how it works. After installing the app, users are greeted with an intro screen, followed by a poll. Users have to choose between three features for the upcoming application. Once the poll is over, our team will add the most requested feature to the app.
The interim app was developed in two weeks. For the added fan value, the Euroleague organized a competition to win two tickets for the Final Four weekend in Berlin. As a result, we had the chance to gain valuable insights via survey and promote the upcoming app as well.
The first design concept
Final information architecture design
Concept sketches of the interim app
Three major basketball leagues. One app to watch
As the Euroleague Mobile app aimed to let users watch basketball matches of three different leagues, our team developed a feature called league-switcher. Thanks to league-switcher, users can access the content of three different basketball leagues without leaving the app.
For fast and effective project execution, the visual design was created in Sketch and shared with the development team via Zeplin.
App promo design and sign-up form
Turkish Airlines Euroleague screens designed in Sketch
From a buggy web application to native mobile apps for iOS and Android within four months
After nearly four months the new Euroleague Mobile app was released on the Apple App Store and Google Play market. Using the new app, basketball fans can stream Euroleague, Eurocup, and Adidas Next Generation Tournament games, access game and player stats, get push notifications for game tip-offs and results, and a lot more.
Now that a sustainable foundation is in place, the way is paved for new features to come.
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