This is one of projects I did when I was working at Naver Corp as a UX Researcher.
When I was working at Naver Corp as a UX researcher, we covered a world-scale event--London Olympics in 2012. As the most popular sports news service in Korea, Naver Sports decided to make a special website for the event for users to enjoy Olympics with detailed and timely information. Naver used to make a simple website for the Olympic games, but the company wanted to offer a full-scale Olympic website for people who love sports.
My team had a mission to design an informative, interactive, timely, and visually attractive Olympic website. We needed to create both PC and mobile version of the website, and I was responsible for the UX research & design of the mobile service.
A task force team for the service was launched, and the team consists of service planners, UX designers, UI designers, front-end developers, and back-end developers. We worked together in a big project room intensively for three months. The task force team showed perfect team work and which led us to produce an excellent product.
Participation
Mobile UX Research & Design: 95%PC UX Research & Design: 15%
Accomplishments
During the London Olympics, Naver Sports mobile website had the highest page view per day since the service launched in 2000. Users were very satisfied with the information and the service provided. Also, the success led Naver Corporation to make higher profits by attracting more advertisers.The UX design of the website was praised by users and the press for its relevance and freshness. The information structure and interactive design of the website set a new standard for Naver Sports event pages.
The task force team was selected as an exemplary project team in 2012.
Changes I Made
The most distinguishing UX feature newly adopted in the service was the date navigation interface. One of the challenging thing in the service was finding a way to facilitate the use of data navigation. During the Olympics, users frequently change dates to explore schedules of games. However, existing navigation was not proper for the service as it offered only two arrows--to one day before and one day after. If a user wanted to move to another week, the user would have to pass through six unnecessary pages to get to the destination.
To find a good solution, I devised a new interface and interaction which use the swiping function in mobile devices. Using the new function, users can swipe the date and change the date effectively. Since the function is designed to feel tension when a date option comes near to an arrow in the middle, playing with the navigation is enjoyable.
At that time, the new interaction was hardly used in mobile web, although several mobile applications adopted the function. Since there were no examples to refer to, developing the new function required more efforts from developer. I made my efforts to persuade developers to create the new function, by presenting reasonable arguments based on transaction data and patterns of user behavior. At the end, developers agreed to the necessity of the new function, and the function could be realized. The effect of the function was successful--the success was proved by transaction analysis conducted after London Olympics--and it became a new standard in several Naver services.
Process
1. User ResearchInterview with 5 Naver Sports users, transaction analysis for a similar event page (2010 Asian Games) were conducted.
2. Defining main functions
Defined main functions based on user research results and consultation among departments related.
3. Information architecture
Considering contents and existing information structure, information architecture was made and shared to co-workers.
4. Interaction design and detailed annotations
Designed function, layout, and interaction for each page. All possible cases including errors were considered. Extremely detailed annotations were included.
5. Follow up UI designers and developers to realize the service
6. Transaction analysis to have insights for the next
As a fact worth to be mentioned, the positive effect of newly developed date navigation interface--which was adopted in the game schedule page--was proved. The analysis showed that the new function was loved by users and contributed to sour the service's page view and click counts. Compared to Asian Game 2010, the last event, the London Olympics's game schedule page accomplished 1,200 times as much clicks than the Asian Game's game schedule page did.
