The racing Post App

The Racing Post app was in sore need of an update. The interface had not been significantly updated in nearly 7 years, the codebase was complete “spaghetti”. Beyond a cleaner codebase, they wanted the new app to incorporate user feedback (unlike the old app), attract a larger growth audience with slightly different needs, integrate the new branding, utilise a design system and UI that could work across app and web, create a more diverse set of news modules for the editorial team, and and and… the list was long. Here’s how it went.

THE CONTEXT & OBJECTIVES

Racing Post aim was to create a B2C product that is the aggregator of all Horse Racing & Sports Better needs which would drive growth across 5 customer and 2 technology goals. The first customer facing product to be released as it is the top revenue generator and the best platform to reach a larger swathe of audience was to be the app.

On top of the overall objectives, we in the product team, also agreed we needed to make the new product meet some basic levels of accessibility, especially since our current core audience skewed older. And that we needed to consider growth audience on top of core, which brought some “uncomfortable” thinking into a company that assumed most of their monetisable audience was similar to themselves.

THE SET UP

My role: Director of Product Design and User Research
Company: Spotlight Sports Group, Racing Post brand
Main Team: B2C product designers, user researchers, B2C product management, delivery, development, 3 P&L owners, CPO, CTO, & the Editor in Chief

Myself and the Head of B2C Product were responsible for shaping and delivering the overall experience and for running the process between the business owners through design and research to hand-off with our off-shore dev team. We needed to ensure the crucial, pragmatic balance of addressing user needs with commerical objectives.

I was charged with overhauling how the business interacted with design and research, specifically how to consider user feedback along with subject matter and discipline expertise. I also delivered, with my designers, a new design system we all designed and built on the fly without slowing development down (too much), and helped research get a jump on user insights for the next feature while they were still synthesising insights from the last one.

THE PROCESS

Planning

To start involved getting agreement on strategy, outcomes, and larger processes with stakeholders, Product Management, Development, Data and Editorial and to agree on what good user metrics looked like alongside business metrics and budgets / timelines. Trust was still being built on all sides as the design and research team was still fairly new, and at that point the team was still working in an adhoc manner (a hybrid mix of kanban and agile with mixed results). This also included getting agreement that processes would have to change and if they didn’t want to project held up, each function would have to agree to ways to be involved that honoured all of the objectives, not just their domain.

I worked closely with the Head of B2C Product to map out how to approach breaking up the work for such a huge project. We worked with the business owners to help solidify and define overall project objectives and success measures (KPIs) and worked with our Data Intelligence Unit (analytics team) to review current metrics to meet or beat in pursuit of those KPIs.

The tech platform

One of the considerations for the design team that affected how we approached designing the design system and overall journeys was the tech team was rebuilding the platform in REACT.

Starting the design sprints

Once all of the crucial up-front decisions were made, the Design Sprint process began… with the workshops… (my company knickname became Workshop Wench for a hot minute). I briefed stakeholders on the scope of the sprint and how we wanted them to get involved, thus giving a framework, timeline and boundaries for our early solution development for these product features and user journeys. Myself and other team members ran the workshops utilising everything from Crazy 8s to competitor analysis reviews and How Might We generation sessions.

As part of the sprint process, I worked with the research team to gather, focus and communicate customer insights prior to a feature being briefed and how to run moderated validation testing that anyone in the company could watch, especially key stakeholders. This research layer fundamentally changed how the business worked with design and research, truly hammering home we possessed a ridiculous amount of knowledge about our users, helping the design of the app be far more customer-centric.

Team members, including myself, separated out the work to be done for the UX and UI layers of each journey, including both click-through prototypes in Figma and more fully interactive prototypes in Protopie. All of us contributed to the creation of the design system, which we had to design, build and update as we went along; as the product fleshed out and requirements shifted. Developers were brought into the process whereever possible to ensure feasibility and to highlight (the many) restrictions of REACT.

Testing and adjusting

Designs were then put into usability testing with current Racing Post users and prospective users. Designs were then updated and tested again (if updates were significant enough). Edge cases, different viewport sizes and documentation were then handled in our “resolution period” before handing over to development.

KEY HIGHLIGHTS AND FEATURES

Racing Post insights and proprietary information more up front (e.g. RP Verdict and Spotlights), helping to showcase our specific content and expertise
A Home Screen (!) that showcases the racing updates, but also the news, tips and bookmakers’ offers – better showcasing what can be found in the app
A better betting journey, including an easy way for users to compare odds between bookmakers before logging in or betting (a game changer for the app)
Accessibility basics: All fonts meet a minimum size and a AA colour contrast setting – as Racing Post’s audience skews older than average, this was also a win
Helping users new to racing: More descriptive labels and access to info and data definitions to helping a larger audience to understand our content and convert with us

THE ORGANISATIONAL IMPACT

Trust and understanding between the business, editorial and product were established: At the start, the UX maturity of the business was extremely low – qual research was not trusted, designers were treated as order takers. Though my implementation of the design sprint process eventually burned out the team (due to budget, timelines and organisational pressures out of my control), it helped all of the teams and stakeholders build trust and knowledge about each department’s roles and the value they provide the company. Towards the last third of the project, we were able to refine processes and schedules to be more manageable for everyone, especially the designers and researchers!

Proper understanding of our users: At the start, most stakeholders assumed users were just like them – just as knowledgeable of horse racing, with similar betting, data reviewing and news consumption habits. Through our pre-project user research and validation user testing sessions throughout the project, our stakeholders and subject matter experts gained a more broad, yet nuanced view of who used our products, when, how and why.

Broader collaboration across departments within and outside of the product production track: Once trust and understanding were established through the design sprints, the design and research team started to be the first port of call for other departments looking for different or more creative way to solve their day-to-day issues – from how to run workshops better, to consultations about how to encourage constructive challenging and giving actionable feedback.

RESULTS

The iOS app released in October 2022, the Android version in November 2022

Commercial impact

In app conversion increased over 10%

News pages consumed up by 2.6 pages per session

Customer satisfaction scores increased from 3.1 to 4.5 (out of five) within 3 months; scores were always high with new and younger app users, long time customer ratings steadily rose

Increased customer set diversification, picking up more growth market and midlevel users

Organisational impact

More formalised and accountable processes for agreeing on business and user needs, briefing teams, gaining user insight, and handover between departments

Design and research became seen as crucial problem solvers and strategic partners for iniatives across the business

New structures and opportunities for advancement and leadership resulted from the length and depth of this project

Want more detail?

This is just the topline . I am happy to go into more relevant detail. Just contact me and let me know which areas you’d like to know more about.

Contact me

Other Projects

Location

London, UK