Project Summary
I was Interaction Designer on a major redesign of Yahoo Sports. We took what was formerly a cold, stats-driven web site and completely re-imagined it, creating a unique experience with emotional impact. Here, I’ll give a high-level view of this immense project and share some of its resulting design artifacts. For a more detailed view into my process, check out the Yahoo Sports Article project that is also documented on this site.
My Role
I helped drive the product and design strategy. I created wireframes, prototypes, technical specifications, and participated in rapid, iterative user testing. Specific aspects of the site that I designed were: global navigation, player pages, article pages, and league pages.
Process
Whiteboarding
No documentation existed prior to this redesign. I spent countless hours in conference rooms at whiteboards with Product Managers extracting their domain and proprietary knowledge so that it may be documented. Ultimately, I put this information into a wiki that could be collaboratively added to and edited indefinitely through future site revisions.
Moodboards
Our design team made moodboards to survey visual trends in sports and to compile inspiration for the visual direction of the site.
Specification Writing
I defined the player pages, article pages, league pages, and global navigation system in exhaustive specification documents. Here’s a sampling from my navigation spec (on the right), paired with the resulting final user experience (on the left):
Diagrams
I defined the variations of modules that might appear on league pages using simplified, color-coded diagrams like these:
Wireframe – Player Page
Here’s one of dozens, if not hundreds, of wireframes that I produced.
Final Design – Player Page
Results
This redesign was well-received by our millions of passionate sports fans. It also won the 2008 Webby Award for Best Sports Site.
The redesign featured some amazing visual design by Jason Nako and front-end web development by Luke Wojewoda.
