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Broad Application Goals

App name:

Athlink

Intended audience:

Athletes looking for other athletes to play their sport with

Value:

In existing apps, there are ways to connect and meet new people, but when it comes to finding other athletes to play with, it is hard to know if you will be compatible playing with another athlete without knowing their skill level and their goals for practice. This app will keep track of all of that information for you, and only suggest athletes that are compatible with what you are looking for in an athlete to play with.

Possible Features

  1. A feature that shows athletes nearby places they can play their sport at.
  2. An age range so user can specify what age's they are comfortable playing with.
  3. A feature that verifies someone's identity is really theirs.
  4. Allow players to choose whether they are looking for casual or serious game play.
  5. A feature that categorizes athletes based on their skill level .
  6. A feature that gives a score to each athlete based on their reliability of showing up
  7. A feature that allows athletes to choose if they only want boys or girls
  8. A feature that suggests nearby places to eat.
  9. A feature that allows players to post sports related videos and pictures
  10. A feature that suggests sports stores nearby for user's related sport
  11. A feature that let’s you track your workout stats
  12. A feature so you connect with people near your location
  13. A leaderboard for being active on the app
  14. Block and report other users so they can't see any of your activity
  15. Favorite someone you enjoyed playing with, and similar athletes will be recommended
  16. Take a picture after the workout, and it gets uploaded to your feed
  17. Make your pictures either private (only seen by friends and you) or public
  18. A feature that keeps track of your personal records

VSD Analysis

  1. Insight: Malicious users and safety concerns

(a)Observation: A big issue with an app that focuses on connecting people to meet in person is the safety of this meeting. There could be people that “catfish” others by either lying about their skill level or who they are altogether. In addition, in extremely malicious situations, somebody might try to use the app to meet people to kidnap or harm them.

(b)Design Modification: I could modify the safety feature to require an athlete to verify their skill level if they state they are advanced. One feature that I could add is when you go to meet someone new, you post where you are going online, so other people know where you should be.

  1. Insight: App being Reappropriated

(a)Observation: Two ways this app could be reappropriated are:

  1. it could be used to try and find someone to date
  2. It could be used by sports companies to advertise their products

(b) Design Modifications: Any app that is used to meet other people could be reappropriated by someone who wants to use it to find potential dating partners. This is hard to avoid. To try and avoid the second reappropriation, I could modify the feature of posting sports related content to only be posted after you do a workout (thus you can still add pictures, but they will be of your workout).

  1. Insight: Technology Adaptation

(a)Observation:This app encourages positive lifestyle changes because it promotes staying active and exercising. It also promotes being more social by meeting people in person. According to an article by Forbes, only 28% of Americans exercise enough. This app makes exercising so much more accessible, because a lot of the time athletes aren’t exercising because they have no other players to play with, not because they don’t want to exercise.

(b). Design Modifications: The leaderboard feature that tracks the top athletes that use the app the most is one way to promote staying social and meeting new athletes.To further promote exercise, I could extend the feature that keeps track of your stats to keep track of your exercise time in total each week. For example, if you were a runner, it could track that one week you ran 50 miles total, and the next week you ran 20 miles.

  1. Insight: Desired Values

(a). Observation: 3 values of this app are: Value 1: Community- connecting athletes with each other to foster a community of athletic people looking to improve themselves Value 2: Commitment- putting in effort and promoting the spirit of working hard towards an attainable goal and towards staying healthy and active Value 3: Competitiveness- helping athletes thrive and channel their competitiveness

(b): Design Modifications: This app is built on creating a community-- the whole point is to meet other athletes. To further promote commitment, I could extend the feature that keeps track of your stats to also track if you are reaching your goals. In other words, you could add weekly goals that you want to reach, and this feature would track if you reached them. For competitiveness, you have the option to say you want competitive play. In addition, you could be rewarded with a discount to a sports store or something if you win a certain amount of competitive play.

  1. Insight: Diverse Geographies

(a). Observation: 2 diverse geographies:

  1. A rural area with a small population: In areas like this, it is less likely there will be a bunch of tennis courts available. This area also probably doesn't have beaches.
  2. An area where it snows: Skiing/snowboarding with someone else is much safer, and a lot of snow activites are group activities.

(b). Design Modifications: I could add a feature that adds/removes sport choices based on location. For example, if you lived in a place where it snows, snow sports would be an option on the app, but there is no point in including them in areas where there is no snow.

Concepts

  1. SkillScore

Purpose:

categorize users based on their results.

Operational Principle:

If you beat a user with a higher skill score, this is considered positive for you but negative for them, so your skill score increases and theirs decreases.

  1. EffortBoard

Purpose:

rank the top 20 users that participate in the most athlete meet-ups that week.

Operational Principle:

If a user met with five athletes this week, and that’s the 20th highest number of athletes met with this week, the user will have a spot on the EffortBoard.

  1. Alike

Purpose:

Filters other users and only shows you users that match all of your preferences

Operational Principle:

If user1 wants to filter for girls that play tennis, then all of the other users that user1 can see to connect with will be girls that play tennis.

  1. TrackStats

Purpose:

track how close you are to a personal goal

Operational Principle:

If your goal was to run 20 miles this week, and you’ve run 4, you’ll be notified to run 16 more miles this week to reach your goal.

  1. User Authentication

Purpose:

user authentication

Operational Principle:

When a user registers they provide a username and password. To authenticate as that user, the user inputs the matching username and password.

  1. Connect

Purpose:

send a request to another user that you want to play with

Operational Principle:

When a user wants to play or connect with another athlete, they send a request to play. If the request is accepted by the athlete, they can keep talking.

  1. User Profile

Purpose:

holds a user’s stats, pictures, videos, and information (skill score, goals, etc.)

Operational Principle:

After a user registers, they can add their estimated skill score, goals for playing, and basic info (gender, sport, etc.) to their profile

  1. Post

Purpose:

Share a stat, picture, or video to your profile/feed

Operational Principle:

When a user finishes a match, they can post their stats and a picture of them playing

  1. Visibility

Purpose:

Filter out which people can see your post

Operational Principle:

When a user wants their post to only be seen by their friends, this will hide the post from all users that are not connected with them.

Dependence Diagram

Dependence Diagram

Sketches

Sketch of EffortBoard concept:

EffortBoard

Sketch of Visibility concept:

Visibility