Project NEO
Creating a home for New Mexico's longest - sustaining FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) team.
Role
Lead UX/UI Designer
The problem
Stakeholders identified two key points, reach/movement, and funding.
Reach/Movement:
The team was unable to reach new prospective students across multiple school districts. They were also recently relocated, necessitating a way for new students, parents, and sponsors to have a way to find them post move. This is the longest sustaining team in the region, and has had trouble bringing alumni back to the team to participate as mentors, as well as finding new students to continue the team with.
Funding:
Exceptional Performance at regional competitions had qualified the team for championship participation, but they lacked the funding needed compete. In a town with relatively few technology opportunities, there is a lack of general awareness for such programs, as well as companies willing and able to participate in funding the team's endeavors.
Pre-existing context
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Team SmugMug gallery
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Social media pages
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The Blue Alliance Website
Competitive Analysis:
I studied other FRC robotics team's websites while constructing a competitive analysis, both for inspiration, and to see where improvements could be made. I found that the "simpler" websites were more straightforward, and made it much easier to locate information that I was looking for. Some websites were more polished than others, but all had two primary purposes; to showcase the abilities of the team through previous years history, competition videos, and awards, and to reach new potential members, mentors, and sponsors. Commonalities included things such as the team meeting locations, past year's competition participation, how to participate in sponsorships, and information for students looking to become a part of the team.
The design process
I created a comprehensive website showcasing the team's history, purpose, and goals.
The idea being to create a hub for team information, provide insight to parents of prospective team members, and attract attention from potential sponsors.
Below is my initial sketch of what it could potentially look like. I made a rough framework of the different screens based on what stakeholders communicated would be necessary for the website. Text and images would be determined later, but through this I could form a general idea of what we wanted things to look like.
The final design narrowed the pages down to a home page showcasing the team, a background information "FIRST Robotics" page for additional information about the program, and others within the organization, a gallery with a "meet the robot" sections for the current year, and a "join the team" page, intended for students, mentors, and potential sponsors alike.
The initial design kept the meet the team and sponsorship sections separate, but as I will explain later, these pages were ultimately combined.
The completed design was accepted by stakeholders and integrated into the team structure. You can visit the site here!
Design Breakdown:
It became clear that the website needed to be kept as simple and concise as possible to enhance navigation. Therefore I created four carefully thought out pages.
Project NEO
Focused on the team's purpose, history, and recent news articles.
It also includes a contact form in the footer, and a robot point of view video as the header background to catch attention.
FIRST Robotics
Provides a general overview of FIRST and their message.
Then, delves into the different categories within FIRST and what kinds of students they are geared for.
Gallery
Provides a gallery for the current competition and off season team, and a robot-specific highlight.
As well as a "time machine" to allow former members and alumni to scroll through and find memories from their years.
Join Us
Here, you will find sponsorship packets, information for students, mentors, and parents, as well as goals for the future.
The Outcome
Website intergrated into team structure, with an assigned student represetative responsible for future updates to the website through the gallery, and in the form of relevant article updates, and competiton news.
Throughout the design process, changes centered around simplifying what was already there as much as possible.
Initially, the student oriented "join us" page, and sponsorships, were featured separately. But combining them allowed for a cohesive tab that anyone looking to become a part of the team's journey could find the information they were looking for.
The FIRST Robotics information page was simplified further to keep just the basics to grab a viewer's attention, and then direct them to the FIRST website for additional information.
Additionally, through student/team input, the meet the robot section on the gallery page was added.
Finally, a contact form was added in the footer of the website so that users could contact the team at any point in time from anywhere in the website. By using a contact form internal to the website, we eliminated the need for copying and pasting an email address, or searching around on the site for a way to get in touch with the team.