WORKING WITH SPECIAL OLYMPICS ATHLETES TO DESIGN A DELIGHTFUL, INCLUSIVE & ACCESSIBLE EXPERIENCE
Signature experiences for the USA Games mobile app, designed with athletes at heart.
Awards Winner of the San Francisco Design Week 2021 award for User Experience.
Project type User-centered design, strategy & product design.
Key tasks Foundational research, research insights and key opportunities, concept ideation informed by research, UX & visual design, prototyping, concept validation & prioritization, product roadmap.
Timeline 7 weeks
My role Strategy, UX and visual design, prototyping.
Team Collaborating closely with a UX researcher, consultation and feedback from Blink head of design, Blink PM, several key stakeholders on the Special Olympics USA Games team, our dev parters at ATS, and part-time support from a Blink Visual Designer.
For the Orlando Special Olympics USA Games with 4,000 athletes and 125,000 fans. These games give athletes with intellectual and physical disabilities a chance to compete on the national stage. Special Olympics came to us to design signature experiences for the mobile app that would be used by everyone attending the event: fans, sponsors, coaches, and athletes. Leaning into principles of inclusive design, we believed that designing the experience around the athletes’ needs would make the experience better for everyone.
the Process
Talking to athletes and coaches to understand their needs, motivations, hopes and challenges surrounding Special Olympics games.
We began by conducting a series of one-on-one interviews with athletes who were preparing to go to the next Special Olympics USA Games. We also ran a co-creation sessions with athletes who had been to a USA or World games in the past to understand their journeys and collaborate on ideas for what would make their experience even better.
Among the insights that came out these interview, three big ones really stood out as key opportunities to shape the digital companion app:
the Result
A digital companion that enhances and extends the games beyond the field.
First, competition is about connection. Athletes emphasized that it doesn’t matter who wins or loses, everyone is high fiving. Second, logistics brings anxiety. The games are crowded, and athletes are often confused about where to be and can easily get lost. Plus, they’re often waiting, either for their team to get results or in lines without knowing what else to do. Third, every athlete deserves celebration. They know how hard athletes worked to get to the Games, and want them all to be recognized. These insights informed critical design decisions for the mobile app.
By focusing on empowering athletes first, Blink helped the Special Olympics design a sports experience for everyone that goes beyond highlights, medal counts, and awards. The result is a purer and more human experience of sporting events. The app is currently in development, launching prior to July 2022.
The mobile app we designed is a digital companion for both athletes and fans that enhances and extends the games beyond the field.
Meet Jolina “JoJo” Harris. She competes in swimming and a number of other sports, and this is her first time competing on a national stage. The app makes logistics delightfully simple for JoJo. It greets her in the morning and shows her a personalized schedule, including what uniform to wear. She sees a message from her coach, where to meet her team, and how long she’ll be at the pool, which helps her feel more connected to her team. She can easily find friends who are competing nearby and add them to free blocks in her schedule. Transportation and walking directions are one tap away.
The app also helps fans encourage and celebrate JoJo. Before her match, JoJo receives some digital cheers from her family, friends, and fans. She gets a playful “Good luck” from a friend, and sends back a similar message with one tap, a feature JoJo loves since she has trouble speaking. The message options are tailored to when athletes need the most encouragement: preparing for, during, or after finishing their competition.
“Thousands of athletes would use this [cheers] section every minute of the day. I think this is important. I like the immediacy of it. The simplicity and color scheme are great too.”
— Athlete
The digital experience also creates sharable mementos of the Games, no matter the results. After her match, the app congratulates JoJo and lets her know the results, alongside professional photos of her competing, and photos taken by family and friends, all of which she can automatically share or post to social media. At the end of the Games, JoJo receives a note that her Official Mementos are ready, aggregating all her competitions into a personalized storybook, a slideshow, and an official event poster — a full ESPN-like spotlight on each and every athlete, extending the experience long after the Games end.
Explore the prototype
“This is going to be a game-changer for the Special Olympics movement, not just the USA Games in 2022.”
— Games CIO Lonnie Snyder
