Overview

Project Brief

Emerald downs are one of the most prominent horse racing organizations in the Pacific Northwest. It’s widely known for its fun racing events with the community. 
The Problem

 Emerald down’s website needs a proper rebranding of visuals and layout, especially in missing features like other horse racing websites.

The Goal

To deliver a personalized experience and intuitive user interface that fits their new visual branding.

Propose a more engaging and seamless experience so that users are comfortable accessing news, racing info, and other events.

Responsibilities

On a team of five people as the UI/UX designer.
User flow mapping, wireframing, and visual design
Tools
Figma, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop

User Interviews

Website Users Demographic 

Emerald Downs's monthly unique visitors on the website are around 3,000, with 58% males and females around 41%, and 57% of the users' age ranging from 30–49 years old.

Conducting User Interview

I started my user research by conducting user interviews with eight users, which vary from weekly active users to infrequent users of the website, to understand what motivates or demotivates them from using the website and their information consumption habits.

I conducted some phone interviews while some I ran in person.

The male interviewees ranged from 25 to 49 years old, while all three women ranged from 22 to 37 years old, which I felt was a fair representative sample of Emerald Downs's current viewer base.

Some key insights from the interview:

• Almost all the participants visit the website once a week, mostly at night.
• Most participants said that the newsletters grab their attention, and eventually, they visit the website, while some even felt that it could get annoying.
• Most participants want to browse just the events to stay updated quickly. If an event grabs their attention, they read the entire event, so they want it to be clear and to the point.
• The features they use most often are live streaming and recap videos.
• Most said they want the website to show more information but would always want to be aware of vital information such as dates and horse changes.

Understanding the Existing Users

Usability Testing

After the user interview, I asked the same participants (eight participants) to test the Emerald Downs website (Virtual and in-person Usability Testing).

I wanted to see how they would interact with the website’s features.

Some of the tasks that I gave them during the testing were:

• Visit the website and read the news, videos, and live stream
• Sign up for the Emerald Racing Club
• View the calendar
• View the racing charts

Defining the Problem

After identifying and analyzing pain points through user research, I defined the following pain point that most users had trouble with.

Pain Point 1- Incomplete mobile website

Multiple users expressed that they would prefer the mobile site, as the Emerald Downs mobile site lacks the complete set of features as the desktop site version. Users pointed out that the mobile version was not as user-friendly as the website. They also suggested that they would prefer the mobile site if the app followed the website's footsteps.

"I am disappointed, and I'm not always by a computer, and I rarely face any problem with that."

Pain Point 2 - Confusing and cluttered UI

Most users complained that UI made reading impossible, and they had to keep scrolling horizontally to find relevant news. Font and spacing made it look overpopulated. Most of them found the body text font small and the heading font large, leading to a terrible viewing experience.

"The moment I clicked, I felt like I was fighting to get the horse racing info I needed."

Pain Point 3 - No recap videos

The user wanted more segmented news to browse through various categories. They felt there was no organization of news, videos, or information.

I know the excellent content, but I can't find any categories! Why would I waste my money on this?

Pain Point 4 - Poor access to online betting

Almost everybody showed their frustration about not having enough access to online betting. Every user expressed a need to have at least a proper way to find out how to do so. 

"I don't know where to bet, and I hate having to go somewhere else to find it."

Pain Point 5 - no notifications

Users expressed that there is no way to mark something on their calendar or know when an important race is coming up without manually searching for it. Pop-ups and notifications are annoying.

The Needs of the Users

Need 1- Customization

Participants expressed that they wanted more customization options for font size, theme, notifications, and categories. They want the content shown to be prioritized based on their preference.

Need 2 - More diverse features

The users wanted more features than cropping and sharing, such as saving, commenting, reading offline, and reporting.

UX Suggestions and the Redesign

The proposed solution of the redesign.

More features in the navbar

Having more straightforward navigation was the primary focus of the redesign. Emerald Downs wants to include many different features and events, so the menu must reflect that.

Race replays and updated betting information

A prominent feature that was missing the most was based on the user interviews. I've made sure to include them and have other opportunities for marketing via social media to help promote the races for those who couldn't attend.

A dedicated page to Emerald Downs Racing Club 

The Emerald Downs Racing Club is a seasonal membership that gives unique access to areas, outfits, and passes on all races. I wanted to highlight the main features and why people want to sign up.

More focus on events and news

This section gives a glimpse of all the latest happenings and media organized into categories to give the user an idea about the content. I added categories like 'press confidentials' and 'tv and radio.'

Project learnings

What was the main challenge in the project?

The secondary research about the brand, i.e., collecting demographics, data, vision, etc., was the most challenging part. As Emerald, Down's website experience made a lot of people not want to use it and finding those who did was difficult.

Reflection and lesson learned.

This was the first time I've worked with a team on a live website.

Looking back on the whole process, redesigning this website, and working on this case study reminded me that users are always the center of every design decision and the impact the smallest of things can have, such as changing an element's position. I learned about figuring out what works and what doesn't and implementing them; the best part is that it doesn't end. The learning process is continuous.

I've also learned the complication working with developers can have in ensuring the media and racing information can be seamlessly updated without much hassle on Emerald Downs' end.