4+1 WOWs we felt after user testing with football fans

WARNING: This post might subconsciously inspire you to listen to your users and test your ideas.

The story below is about Foosio, an online game for football fans where you get points based on real players' performance in real life, in real time. Foosio was created by some funny and open-minded guys from Hungary. They asked us to redesign their game with more of a user experience approach, because they want their fantastic game to be usable and lovable.

• We started by compiling the personas with them.

• We sketched out the current user journey and simplified it.

• We then designed a new mobile wireframe, firstly on paper and then in an online version with interactions, using axure's wire framing tool.

• We carried out user interviews and tests and iterated, iterated and iterated again, twice a week. We gave our testers an interactive prototype and watched them perform real tasks with it. We iterated test by test and always adjusted the prototype based on the latest results. By doing this we were able to developed the design and the whole concept simultaneously.

• We did interviews together with the tests, which helped to break the ice and get the testers thinking out loud. Football fans love to speak about their favorite players, team, social events and anything connected to the game. We mainly invited testers from England and Hungary, and also carried out some remote tests with German fans as they are the games' main target group.

We started 2 months ago, we have already done 15 interviews and tests and we still have 4 more months until Foosio relaunch the game. So we are only at the beginning but we have learnt so much:

WOW #1 - Users inspire us with great value propositions

We spent a lot of time trying to create a shiny value proposition highlighting the unique values of the game. But it didn’t work. Users read it for the first time and repeated the important words, but it turned out that they had no clue what the game was about. So instead of thinking about a perfect and increasingly abstract value proposition we just listened to the users and they gave us simple but more understandable variations for it. So we just simply asked them: “How would you recommend the game to your friends? ”...and it worked.

WOW #2 - A game that builds on the users’ previous experience

In Foosios' game, the phrase “fantasy football” means that you get points based on the football players' real performance. The expressions means a lot to someone born in the UK, who has grown up playing fantasy football during boring school classes . But, as we found out, it means nothing to a person from another part of the world. It even misleads them because they think that it has no connection with reality. So after many tests with English and non-english fans, we concluded that we have to be careful with wording and be responsive to the user's previous experience.

WOW #3 - Users want limits

In the current version of the game there is no budget or limit to building up your dream team. You have the freedom to pick whichever 11 players from any team. But the users asked for a limited budget to enhance their game experience. They thought that they could spend the budget in a more unique and smarter way than other users.

WOW #4 - Users love to personalize things even if that does not affect their game results

In the current version of the game you can set your team's formation and check it on the field view, with the players lined up in a row. The position of place of your players are lined up in a row. As you get points based on the real players real-time performance the position of your player on your game pitch does not influence your results. But we have a lot of videos showing that the users tried to move them and create their own formation, just for fun. And you know what...what the users want they should get.

WOW +1 - The users' character influences their behaviour within the online game

You don’t even need user interviews, just go and watch football fans behaviour during and after a match. You will realize that they are very proud to promote their favourite teams to the world. Group identity is important and they love to compete with other club’s fans. So we decided to:

• build in a group chat and let the users celebrate with each other
• invite competitors from other fan clubs
• have a customizable profile, and show their favorites to others.

As a UX researcher I must say that I feel very lucky because to the foosio guys that they were so enthusiastic and participated in all the tests, and watched the videos instead of doing other things. It was easy to draw conclusions together with them instead of spending time trying to convince them about something that was obvious to the users.

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