NBA Game Time Lite for iOS

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NBA Game Time Lite for iOS
Bruno Ribeiro and Gabe Tippery, Instructed by Professor R. Brian Stone, Winter 2010.

On this project, we looked at the application NBA Game Time Lite (NBA GT Lite) for iPhone OS. This application is geared towards NBA basketball fans and is intended to help these fans stay up to date regarding the sport and organization. In an effort towards full-disclosure, this topic was also selected to help inform the researcher’s work on another application for the iPhone OS, which is also in the sports fan market space.

The NBA GT Lite application strives to fulfill four primary functions for the NBA fan:

1. All the games, divided by day

2. Score by quarter

3. Stats by teams or players for the game.

4. Standings by conference, division or in the league

Learning Outcomes

NBA GT Lite was chosen as an example of a sports application for mobile devices. We hope that we can apply the learning outcomes from this study to other application, especially those that brings live stats during games.

User Needs & Expectations

We wanted to understand what the users would expect to find in an application like this, and if they think that NBA GT Lite meets those expectations. We want to learn how a device like that would enhance their experience of watching a NBA game.

Adoption Reasons

It was important for us to understand what are the main features that the app has or lacks that would lead the users to adopt it or use it more often. Would they use this application during the games, or to check scores, or not at all?

User Perceptions

The most important learn outcome for this project was regarding the ease of use of the application.

This application only works on landscape mode. We wanted to know how it is perceived by regular users of the iPhone OS. It may feel weird on the first time someone is using it, but we want to discover if it is still a problem after few days of using.

Furthermore, we would like to have a feedback of the navigation of the app. We wanted the users to evaluate how easy it is to find the provided information.

Methods

We asked our volunteer users to download the NBA GT Lite application to their iPhone OS device. They were asked then to use the application along with their normal NBA fan activities, be these just checking up on their favorite teams, using while watching the game (live or televised), or how ever they see it working into their fan life. Then, we interviewed the participants about their experience and had them take a short User Survey to document more quantitative aspects of the experience.

Expert Review

In order to prepare ourselves, each of the researchers spent some time using and discussing NBA GT Lite. During this period we identified tasks that the application is capable of and drew our own expert opinions of areas of the application that users may find issues or inconsistencies with in. We used these conclusions to help develop our tasks for analysis in order to simultaneously evaluate as many aspects as possible while also being respectful of our participants’ time.

Qualitative

To cover the qualitative aspects of our analysis we conducted face-to-face interviews and discussions with the users after they have interacted with NBA GT Lite. These weree facilitated by a User Worksheet that allowed the users, as they interact with the application, to document notes on their interactions for discussion during the face-to-face interviews. These interviews were documented via text, audio, and video means.

Quantitative

To cover the quantitative aspects of our analysis we asked the participants to complete a short online User Survey. This survey was designed to gather basic demographic information as well as the participants’ familiarity with the iPhone OS, the applications general market space, and the participant’s overall reflections on the application.

Task Analysis

For the Task Analysis, we asked the participants to please use the NBA GT Lite application to answer four questions:
Q1. How many points did Kobe Bryant score last Friday?

Q2. Who was the player with more points in this game?

Q3. What team had the best average on the free-throws?

Q4. How are the 76ers doing in this season?

Observations

As noted in the above table, all of our participants were able to complete the tasks, but 35 percent of the tasks were not completed using the normative path. The most common reasons for this seemed to be cases were the NBA GT Lite application broke expected norms. For example, during Task Q2 several participants attempted to tap the “POINTS” column header, assuming that the list would then sort by that data as many other spreadsheet applications do. This results in no action in NBA GT Lite. Also, the “PLAYER” and “TEAM” targets seem to be both too small and not as responsive as the participants seemed comfortable with.

Participant Comments

The following is a list of comments from the participants taken both from the think out loud protocol as well as the interview portion of the participant interactions:

“Didn’t like the basketball court: unnecessary and distractive.”
“Standing mode: the column head disappeared after scrolling. Bad bad thing!”
“House icon to represent the home team was confusing. It could be a button to home screen.”
“Doesn’t look like the logo is a button (but learned it, of course)”
“There’s no rule lines in standings”
“Everything is really small”
“Looked for ‘box score’”
“Would like to have a ‘Home’ button on the games page.”

Redesign

Based on comments from partcipants, several changes were made on the game, stats, and standing pages.