Epoch - Tournament Management System
Designing a tournament management system for science olympiad event organizers.
Role + Contribution:
UI/UX Design, Research, Prototype
Team:
1 UX Designer (Me), 7 Developers, 1 PM/Director
Time Frame:
September 2024 - October 2024, 1.5 months
Tools:
Figma, Figjam
Overview
Problem Space
Science Olympiad event organizers at the University of Georgia were looking for a better way to manage and organize tournaments. The organizers relied on emails, paper clipboards, excel spreadsheets to organize events, keep score, and attendance. This resulted in an unorganized system of event management as well as non-administrators having unregulated data access to internal scoring documents.
Business Need
Currently, reliance on manual processes and fragmented tools like spreadsheets, paper, and clipboards leads to inefficiencies, errors, and data security risks. These issues not only complicate event coordination but also increase operational costs due to time-intensive manual labor and printing resources.
Solution
Tournament management system that includes:
The ability for tournament administrators to create and manage tournaments and events
The ability for tournament administrators to assign volunteers to events as event supervisors
Attendance and score management for each event hosted
The Challenge: How this story begins…
UGA Science Olympiad committee hoped to improve their tournament volunteer experience with a new, updated system of management. So, a development team was formed to create this platform! However, with no UX designer on the team, their original design had little form or function:
Meanwhile, I was looking to apply my skills to a real world project. So when a friend reached out asking me to help design for this platform, I jumped at the chance.
However, because I was brought on late, that meant I only had 1.5 months to completely flesh out the design and test the product. I had my work cut out for me, so I jumped straight into the project to learn more about its objectives.
Secondary Research
Discovery-why is our problem a problem?
What are tournament administrators struggling with?
Internal Research
I met with the current director of Science Olympiad at UGA to learn about:
The current tournament management process
Their reasoning behind wanting a new system
The existing, actionable community feedback
Competitive Analysis
Ezra
Tech
Competitive Analysis
To gain a better understanding of the current market for similar scoring tools, I conducted a competitive analysis on 4 software that Science Olympiad tournament organizers were known to be using.
Competitive Features - Pros
Weaknesses - Cons
Avogadro
Real-time score input and validation
Multiple judges can input simultaneously
Public results grid
Limited to web-based use
Steeper learning curve for new users
High price
Duosmium
Great for tracking and displaying tournament results
User-friendly interface for reviewing past performances
Focused primarily on result display rather than score management
Limited scoring functionalities
Microsoft Excel
Flexible and customizable, allowing tournament organizers to tailor sheets and formulas to specific needs
Already available and familiar to most users
Limited in collaborative features compared to cloud-based systems
Lacks automated integration for score entry and validation, which can result in delays during scoring
Ezra Tech
User-friendly for managing scores and communication between organizers and coaches
Previously used in state and regional tournament
No longer operational as of 2020
Limited legacy support or access to prior records
Primary Research: Interviews and surveys with organizers and volunteers
Though my initial research provided a good starting point to help me understand the current problem, I also conducted interviews and a survey to further understand the problem from the user's perspective.
Interviews & Surveys
Interviews with 4 organizers
+
23 survey responses
What I discovered from my research phase:
Security
Previous methods of using excel spreadsheets to keep information resulted in users with unregulated access to information.
Too many documents
Each event supervisor had their own clipboard, meaning that event documents ended up unorganized due to being written on paper.
Too little time
Event supervisors did not have the time required to manually calculate and check through every listing when it came time for score tracking.
Who are our users?
After understanding the users' struggles of the current system, I moved onto design exploration. Before I did that, however, I had to understand the potential users of the product.
My primary research helped me understand who I was designing for.
Tournament Administrators (TA)
Administrators in charge of the overall tournament. They decide on the event details, times, and overall structure for the tournament.
Typically faculty and graduate students
Event Supervisors (ES)
Volunteers responsible for keeping score and attendance for each event and report to tournament administrators.
Typically graduate and undergraduate students and adults.
Innovation: Exploring design opportunities
I was the only designer on this product so I had my work cut out for me. Luckily, I was able to discuss with the development team every step of the way so that we didn't waste any time on designing impossible solutions.
During this phase, I kept this question in mind:
How might we create efficiency for tournament administrators while empowering volunteers to track attendance and manage scoring more efficiently and make the process easier for everyone involved?
Iteration Highlights
Throughout all of these, I made sure to test with users to uncover their thoughts, interactions, and perception of the product so that I could make the interactions easier for them.
I collaborated with developers to explore innovation for the entire product, but here are highlights of some of the features that I designed for the tournament management system.
Adding schools into events
Tournament Administrators can add schools into events and their respective time blocks to set up attendance and score lists for event supervisors to manage.
The fixed panel allows users to see the current list of events and the add schools function simultaneously.
Iteration 1: Side panel
Developers expressed concerns on creating a brand new component.
Users expressed that steps showed on one side panel screen feels cluttered and tedious.
Iteration 2: Middle pop up panel
Developers can reuse previously created pop up components.
Users expressed that the pop up screen makes the process feel tedious.
Creating a tournament
Tournament Administrators can create tournaments and events for event supervisors to take attendance and keep score for.
Iteration 1: One page with nested drop downs
Users expressed one page with nested drop downs made the process feel overwhelming and complex.
Iteration 2: Split up into multiple screens
Users felt that the process being split up into screens made the process feel less overwhelming and easy to digest.
Final Design
After defining our product goals and user groups, I understood that our product needed to be easy to use and accomplish the needs of our users and moved onto the design phase, using research to back my design decisions.
Design Features
Finally, we arrive at the final features of Epoch! The month and a half journey finally comes to an end through the deployment of the 6 main features I designed during the design process.
Feature 1: Create Tournament
Tournament administrators (TA) are able to create a tournament, create events, and add schools into that event.
For this feature, I took the time to understand the necessary parts of creating a tournament that a TA needs to go through. Because the process is long and complex, even on paper, I took care to design the experience as simple as I possibly could.
Feature 2: Attendance
Event supervisors (ES) are able to take attendance and leave comments for each event they are assigned to do.
I designed this feature to allow for easy interactions. ES need to take attendance quickly, so I made the buttons large, distinct, and visible for quick interactions.
Feature 3: Scores
Event supervisors (ES) and tournament administrators (TA) are able to keep score, but only TA's are able to finalize the scores.
I also designed this feature to allow for easy interactions. I user tested this page many times throughout the iterations, experimenting with grids and tables for the layout and pop ups for inputting scores. At the end, I settled on the grid layout for an easy viewing experience.
