SAP Group Seating is the simple way to make sure friends sit together for the big game. Tailgates are nice and everyone loves a victory celebration, but wouldn’t you want to experience the game with the same people next to you? The app lets the users gather friends for the big game using social media or email. Anyone can be the rallying force behind the fun without playing the role of debt collector or nag. 

Anyone who buys a ticket through your group will sit together. Once invited guests buy in, the app works its magic to sort out the seating.

There’s no worrying about whether seats will be close. No need to collect money. And both the group organizer and friends are able to view the guest list in real time. 

Our team partnered up with Stanford’s Department of Athletics from the very beginning and followed the design thinking principles. Together we brainstormed about potential scenarios for Stanford’s sport fans and non-sport fans. We went through multiple iterations, created personas (image 2) and storyboards, wireframes (image 3), visuals (image 4), prototypes – and evaluated them with users (image 5).

We attended a few Stanford football and basketball games, interviewed and observed fans during tailgating, as well as during and after the game. This way we built empathy for our end users and got the real experience. 

And I did...
...design lead for SAP Group Seating. I worked very closely with our customer, end users, product management, developers, copy writer and other designers (visual and research). I formed the vision together with the product manager and defined requirements based on our user research. I created the interaction design and high fidelity mockups. Since our team was a small team I took care of the project planning. I also helped our third party usability experts to run the usability tests. Last but not least I worked with our testers and helped them with quality assurance (QA).

Challenges
SAP Group Seating was unfortunately never released due to integration problems with the third party ticketing vendor. You might think it was a technical problem, but this time it was the user experience. We weren't allowed to touch their interaction design so the break of two completely different experiences was too big. Till today people who know about our app and want to go to an event with a group, wish we had released it.

Key takeaways
SAP Group Seating is my favorite project. The setup, team, topic and everything else was very startup like. I loved the fast pace, close relationship with the customers and users, and the little process we had. Dealing with third party copy writers and usability labs was interesting and insightful. 
I grew professionally during that project and learned a lot about leading design and forming a vision.