Toronto Raptors Mobile App

Overview

Despite an NBA championship in 2019, the Toronto Raptors app had not been redesigned since the original launch date back in 2017. We recognized this as a massive opportunity to reconnect and re-engage with our the incredible fan base.

As Mobile Team Lead, I managed a cross-functional team while owning both the overall product strategy and overseeing the design and development of the app which relaunched on-time for opening night, October 17, 2023.

The result? Fans loved the relaunched app as was evidenced by the month-over-month metrics and, additionally, the redesign also made significant business impact across various business units.

Challenges

Before we could begin the redesign, we had to gather fan sentiment and feedback to understand what was working and what wasn't.

1. Confusing and unintutive information hierarchy

2. Lack of up-to-date content and poor visual experience

3. Outdated aesthetic that failed to keep up with the new team branding

4. Tech stack severely limited the ability to create engaging fan experiences

5. Lack of product ownership and governance

6. Fragmented, inconsistent and limited analytics

Goals

Given the app's central role across both the fan journey as well as the business, various considerations were necessary for success.

1. Relaunched apps had to have full parity of all the previous apps features

2. No disruptions to any revenue streams that stemmed from the apps

3. Update the tech stack and unlock new mobile features

4. Launch in time for new 2022-2023 season opening night

5. Test new apps during pre-season games, could not launch opening night without testing

6. Create dynamic experiences for different fan types through segmentation

Roles + Process

The relaunch was a massive undertaking that involved 5 direct reports, 20+ indirect reports and Front Office approval along the way. Not to mention the relaunch of the Leafs app was happening at the same time to further complicate delivery.

1. Built and led a cross-functional team including Program Manager, Product Manager, Sr. Product Designer, Jr. Product Designer and UX Researcher

2. Captured existing metrics and set new UX and Business KPI targets to establish product success

3. Implemented fan feedback loop which helped inform team backlog, feature delivery and product focus

4. Managed various vendor relationships, led creative direction and oversaw development efforts

5. Created, implemented and maintained strategy as well as roadmap for both pre and post app launch

6. Lead marketing efforts including social, arena billboards and wrote script for player-read promotional videos

7. Worked with Front Office and all involved business units including Retail, Marketing, Studio, Food and Beverage, Business Intelligence, Global Partnerships, Digital Operations, Ticketing and Memberships

8. Managed both the working team and the app's budgeting and approval processes

Research

The mobile team spent the entire 2021-2022 season researching and synthesizing how fans used the app so we could uncover opportunities as well as understand issues

1. Our main research focused around capturing qualitative feedback through user interviews and quantitiative insights through prototypes

2. Initiated guerrilla research strategy on Opening night to garner insights directly from fans

3. Feedback loop was broken and fragmented so we created a new feedback cycle that was gathered through the apps specifically

4. Feedback issues mentioned 10 times were prioritized, outside of bugs, and created our fan feature request backlog

5. Comprehensive competitive analysis on other team and league apps

Feature Proposal

After synthesizing all the user research findings we had gathered, we focused on the following:

1. Rework Information Architecture for better discoverability

   • Dedicated Video and News sections

   • Home page is a portal into the rest of the app

   • Dedicated + tiered “Offers & Promos” and “Games & Contest”

   • Ticketing now top level nav item

   • Redesigned profile page with avatar upload, tickets and offers

2. Harness Content Library + Picture-in-picture Video Features

   • A lot of content was missing or living on YouTube only

   • Fans wanted to watch videos but there was very little content

   • Upgrading the video player to be picture-in-picture so fans could traverse the app and check score or stats but still be watching videos

   • Promote late breaking news and press conferences

3. iOS Live Activities

   • As 75% of our fanbase use iOS, giving them access to one of the latest iOS features allowed them to stay closer to the game with live play-by-play updates directly on their phone's lock screen without the need for push notifications

4. Segmentation Capabilities

   • Ability to show and/or hide content based on attributes like Location, Behaviour, Time or Feedback

   • Ability to send push notifications based on attributes like Location, Behaviour, Time and/or Feedback

Prototype Testing

Once we had synthesized the data, we started prototype testing to make sure we were addressing the issues we were seeing:

Marketing Launch

After the successful soft launch we rolled out during the preseason, we created and delivered all digital assets to promote the new app for regular season which included all the following assets:

Outcome

After an entire season of researching and an offseason of designing, testing and building, our month-over-month increase in stats was tremendous. More importantly, our fans were super happy with the new app.