Rally
Building Culture
& Community
Through Sports
Rally is an online community for athletes to meet, socialize, and schedule a time for a quick rally at the park. By simply swiping left or right on athletes with similar attributes, interests, and skill levels as you, the app creates "matches" based on athletes who have both picked one another.
Type
Mobile App
Student Project
Timeline
3 Weeks
Tools
Figma
BACKGROUND
This may sound odd, but for the longest time I couldn't find a hobby. I felt really intimidated to try something out without having other people tag along. This summer my partner and I decided to try rock climbing. It was something I really wanted to try out but I never had a climbing partner. Safety tip: find a climbing partner that weights similarly to you. Learned that the hard way. 🪨 Something that I had thought was that, had it not been for the fact I had my partner around to try this out with. I probably would have never done it. Rock climbing especially requires a partner. And so what if there was a way to connect people through different sports.
This started out as a rock climbing project but ended up being something much bigger. Through this project I wanted to explore ways that technology can bring people together in shared cultures and activities. A space for planning, community and time for a good rally.
RESEARCH
During the research phase of this project, I wanted to fully understand the current athlete meeting applications that are being used. Or even applications used to meet friends. After my research, I interviewed eight athletes, and three non-athletes. I wanted to learn about an athletes state of mind in terms of meeting other atheletes and getting into a sport. From the non-athletes I wanted to learn about reasons why they may or may not have tried a sport. What are the pain points of this user group and is there a way I can design for that.
INSIGHT
Existing Paradigms
- Hoop, Flip, Wink and Bumble are all products designed to help people connect with new friends. From my research there are currently no apps that connects athletes with one another. Though, there are apps that connects gamers, moms and students together.
From an Athletes Perspective
- Genuine Community and Communication: Being able quickly contact and build community with your friends through an activity is incredibly important. Or to even have the sense of community, that you're a part of something. Is very important for the athletes I interviewed.
- Numbers matters: Playing against or with people who pracitice at a similar level to you is imporant. From the athletes who participate in size based activites (power lifting, rock climbing, martial arts, etc) it's extremely important that they are with people similar to themselves.
From a non-athletes perspective
- Confidence: Non-athletes often feel less inclined to try a new activity out without friends or family sheerly out of confidence. From one interview:
"I don't want to embaress myself from my lack of skill in a new sport" - Culture & Lingo: Getting started in a new sport without understanding the culture or language seems to be one of the scariest tasks for someone getting into a new sport.
JOURNEY MAP
PERSONAS
CHALLENGES & GOALS
From my research and insight we can identity
a few challenges and goals for this project
Challenges:
- How can I make it less intimidating for a non-athlete to try a new sport?
- How can I build an online commmunity for local athletes?
Goals:
- The app curates a list of similar local athletes.
- A users can seamlessly book times in gyms and parks
- An only forum allowing users to connect with a larger athletic community.
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
Wireframes
Hi-fidelity Prototype
On Boarding
FEATURE: DRAFT
By simply swiping left or right, users go through a line up of similar local athletes. If both athletes pick one another, they're free to chat and make plans.
FEATURE: POSTS
By incorperating an online forum into the app, Rally builds a community that is larger than the athletes a user might have matched with. Creating a large sense of community in an athletes sport.