SAP Player Engagement is an app for coaches and players of a sports team to communicate and exchange information. Coaches can share team philosophy and gameplay tactics with relevant statistics and videos. This way the players can prepare for the game more effectively and engage on tactical discussions (image 1). The team chat room is for pep talks and sharing fun moments with the team.

Since not every team has its players and coaches physically together at all time (especially national teams), it is very important to provide an easy way to communicate information. The SAP Player Engagement app creates a sense of family and strengths the bond between players and coaches.

We started off with a Design Thinking workshop with our customers and users (image 3), in which we explored the world of sports teams and gained an understanding of our target personas. Based on our user research we derived requirements and build the designs within a very short time frame.

And I did...
...mainly focus on user research, communication and interaction design.

Challenges
Validation with end users was very difficult since soccer players where internationally distributed at their clubs and not really available. We got access to a handful of players, but we mostly used scouts as proxy users.

Key takeaways
It was very interesting to learn about the dynamics in soccer teams and their philosophy. It is very hard for international teams to get hold of their players, especially to get some face time with them. SAP Player Engagement is helping them with their communicating, which is key!