APP DESIGN & BRANDING
Find Football: Connecting
players with grassroots
clubs and casual football opportunities.
MY ROLE
Lead UI designer
Design system
Art direction
CLIENT
The FA
Project overview
In 2021, The FA created a new high-profile consumer-facing brand, England Football, to represent and promote football participation in England. The purpose of the new identity was to provide an enhanced level of aspiration and inspiration to everyone who loves the game and reflect the increased inclusivity and diversity across all levels and abilities.
As part of this new brand, the FA wanted to create an online search tool that enables participants (casual and club players) to search for games across FA and social channels while taking them on a personalised, gamified playing journey that leverages Machine Learning to drive personalised stats and recommendations.
Brand application exploration
Applying the brand to the UI, my role involved adapting the New England football brand guidelines for integration into the Find Football UI. This process included utilizing key line crops and colours. I initiated the project by crafting a series of style tiles, exploring colour, typography, and keyline crops as the initial foundation for the Find Football UI
Onboarding journey
After laying the foundations of the UI through the style tile exploration, I collaborated closely with the UX and BA teams to define the onboarding journey for Find Football. We aimed to reflect the users in the UI by utilizing dynamic imagery that changes based on the users' inputs. Our goal was to create an onboarding experience that mirrors the user and assists them in finding the best football opportunities available in their local area.
As this is a search tool, we aim to provide users with the opportunity to orient themselves by incorporating a map view. This allows them to easily locate local clubs in relation to their residence.
Club details pages serve as the shop windows for local grassroots football clubs. We aimed to craft visually impactful and attractive landing pages that not only showcase the clubs but also entice new players to join the grassroots teams.
Player profile
The challenge at hand was to enhance the grassroots football experience by introducing a feature that not only visualizes players' progress but also fosters a sense of community among players and teams.
The Grassroot Player Profile was developed to address this challenge. This innovative feature allows grassroots players to seamlessly share their profiles, creating a dynamic platform for interaction among players and teams.
The Grassroot Player Profile achieves multifaceted objectives: visually representing each player's football journey, introducing performance badges for user recognition and community building, integrating gamification to enhance user engagement and sustained platform connection, offering tailored tips and curated videos for performance improvement, and providing valuable insights to the Football Association (FA) into the diverse needs of its user base, fostering a strengthened connection between players and the governing body.
Explainer videos
Prior to the product launch, I produced a series of informative football explainer videos. These videos were designed to demystify the different variations of football, enlightening viewers on how each form could be a gateway for their active involvement in the sport.
Design Impact
86%
Find Football conversion rate average, with over 2,800 users going on to contact clubs to book sessions. 12% of these users went directly from the England Football platform to one of our partners’ websites.
280k
Unique users visited the site on announcement day — more than twice the number who visited for the squad announcement for World Cup 2018 and its highest number at the time.