Bion.

Football is a passion. A dream of many young kids is to become a professional player. Becoming one lingers in their most avid dreams. And, sometimes awkwardly, the parents are those with the wildest ambition. Bion gives players a chance to be seen, it keeps their dreams alive by giving them visibility, the opportunity to be spotted, and the power to put themselves in front of the scouts as it has never been done before.

From an idea to an MVP.

The Bion team approached us with a convoluted concept. The idea had too many features, it was too complex and ultimately lacked thorough definition and feature prioritisation.

Naturally, the more features, the longer the product would take to build and the more budget it would require. Being slower to market, spending more money was not an option for Bion and, arguably, doesn't make sense for most products. We wanted to achieve the most efficient cost/benefit product possible.

With this, even before signing any agreements, we sat down, had a few workshops and created a comprehensive scope checklist. This allowed us to jot down all the desired features, estimate them and prioritise based on their cost/benefit ratio.

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A Target Audience issue.

Bion is a product unlike many. It has several audiences to cater for at once. For starters, the Players. From 8-year-olds to 20-something-year-olds, Bion is for all. For the youngsters, we had to account for their parents, too – ultimately, they are the ones calling the final shot (payment). Then there are teenagers – savvier and more independent but still lack the financial capacity to pay for their own scouting. Once again, parents needed it as well. Ultimately, Bion has to convince two generations to guarantee a conversion: parents and their children.

There are young adults who are getting their working lives started while playing football in their spare time. There are semi-professionals getting paid a match-playing salary whilst working Monday to Friday in a full-time job. Teenagers at established academies already see their future in the game. Teenagers dreaming of making it big who play for their local team. Young children in Messi shirts. Reluctant parents. Parents are living their dream through their kids. And yet, Bion had to cater for all of them.

On top of all this, there are Scouts. Traditionally, users of the good old pen and paper, mostly guys who have been around the block for quite some time, are suddenly presented with an interface in their hands, watching 3 or 4 players per match. The UX had to be spot-on. Multitasking at its finest.

Traditional scouting vs behaviour analysis.

Bion defends that traditional scouting isn't the most accurate way of assessing players' capacities. Instead, they acknowledge that analysing behaviours rather than attributes is much fairer and more representative of a player's capabilities and potential.

However, football fans, Football Manager (FM) and FIFA players are used to attributes, ratings, and overalls. We wanted to give them something they would be familiar with and could look at and immediately identify their hot spots.

Furthermore, we wanted to give the players something that could cultivate their competitive nature, something they could use to compare themselves against other players, nurturing their engagements with the product.

So, here's how it goes. Scouts assess behaviours during the scouting session. That's it. Based on the player's playing position, they are presented with some predefined behaviours, but they can add as many as they want.

On the back end, we do all the heavy lifting. We map all the analysed behaviours to attributes for a consolidated attribute quantification (FM alike). Then, we map all the Attributes to create 6 Ratings (FIFA style). From these Ratings, we obtain the final Overall. One single number that sums up a player's ability. All of this is pondered based on the player's playing position and age.

How's the mapping done? We've built a dedicated CMS for easy mapping, fine-tuning weightings, and refining mappings.

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Mobile App or not? That is the question.

Can you guess when players will use Bion the most? Right, in the locker room with their mates. That's where peer pressure and the player's competitive nature will kick in, pushing them to schedule their scouting sessions. Under this assumption (later backed up by research data), Mobile had to be a priority.

However, the Desktop could not be entirely discarded. Scouts would primarily use their side of Bion on a larger screen, as clubs and agents would too.

Since development for Web and Mobile would require different tech, it would require more design time, more development effort, and therefore more budget. Since we didn't want to extend the budget or the timeline, we went for a fully Web product, perfectly designed for Mobile.

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User Testing with everyone.

Bion was thoroughly tested with Scouts, Players of various ages, parents of the younger ones, and random football aficionados. This fed us back with valuable insights. Not only were bugs found and reported, but it also raised awareness for some UX changes that allowed us to fine-tune the experience and a couple of ideas that made Bion a more accessible product.

Brand Design by Bastarda.