CREW
Founded by three Mikes and shepherded by Sarah Conrad, CREW is creating a new communication experience for sports fans. Labelled as ‘UK Mike’, the team asked me to help them define the direction for the identity and product.
What I did
Strategy, Identity, Animation & UX/UI
Defining directions
Having worked with the team before and being a target user myself, I had a good idea of what they were looking for. Starting with a deep dive into relevant chat apps and adjacent sports.
Putting together three visual territories to show where they could take it and a strategy to explain how I would get them there. Highlighting ideas in making it a uniquely sporty experience and potential product hurdles we could avoid by doing the identity first.
Direction identified
We decided on CREW as a name, refined our direction, and created a sporty, bold and versatile identity inspired by successful sports brands.
Putting the identity to work
With the identity ready, the team asked me to create a basic prototype. Inspired by the best purpose-built communication tools like Whatsapp, Slack and Discord, we designed initial screens for our fan-focused features and to show the UX/UI team how the identity should be put through the product.
Inbox
All your crews in one place
With diehard sports fans in mind, we kept the inbox simple and easy to use. Using court icons to label a crew and sport, combining them for multi-sport crews.
Live scores & Box scores
To avoid app changes and create sports-relevant displays. We created a score box that displays live scores of recent results and expands to show the Box Score.
Simple sports conversations
Shared content
People can create feeds of relevant & shareable content by selecting athletes, teams and leagues. Chat includes a drop-down to show past content to avoid endless retrospective scrolling.
Who's in the crew
The people drop-down provides a quick and easy to access list of crew members and identifies who's currently active.
Proper sports debates
Playbook
Sports fans LOVE stats & enjoy a competitive debate. We created Playbook, a series of sports-specific tools to help people win their next bargument.
Game Simulation
Simulate matches with real sports data
Player or team stats
Reference stats to prove a point
Past scores
Recall what the score was last time
Future fixture
Share a fixture to start the debate early
Sports highlight
Remind people of that last minute winner
Chat while the games on
To create a unique sports experience and better organise messages, we created in-game chats, including a heads-up game timeline to keep up to date who scored and when.
Live updates
The in-game chat sends live updates from the game, goals, substitutions, injuries…etc. can be delivered to the crew for those not watching and those keen to catch every moment.
In-game reactions
Nothing can replace being at a live game, but we wanted to emulate that excitement. Creating in-game reactions allows fans to celebrate, exclaim, and express themselves.
The bottom line, how'd it go?
Mike Fox
CREW Co-founder
Mike is a true talent for building brands and designing identities. He’s been integral in fleshing out our brand strategy and been so much more than a designer, helping us with product development and consumer definition. His passion and deep understanding of how design functions make him an invaluable partner to our business.
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