Winning Wimbledon - A two-week creative jam

Client: Wimbledon & IBM Sports & Entertainment
Role: UX/UI Designer and Enterprise Design Thinking Coach

Intent

For the past 30 years, IBM and AELTC (All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club) have partnered to maintain Wimbledon’s position as the pinnacle of the sport through an industry-leading digital presence.

In a two-week creative jam presented by the Wimbledon team, we were tasked with creating a unique experience for Wimbledon fans through the use of IBM AI technologies that deliver a more informed and many cases, more personalized experience.

Impact

Using Watson AI capabilities like sentiment rating, power ranking, and confidence scoring, we envisioned a full tournament experience for all Wimbledon fans. Given the short timeframe from design to delivery, we were given a set of guidelines for our designs: design within the Wimbledon branding, drive content and leverage existing IBM AI technologies, design a mobile-first experience, and showcase IBM’s capabilities in the market of tennis.

Designed ten high-fidelity IBM and Wimbledon branded screens
Designed an interactive promo video
Delivered a comprehensive vision blueprint including all deliverables: executive summary, user-centric narrative, Watson AI technologies, and high-fidelity screens

A new fan experience, with Watson AI

Our design thinking process:

We began our work by brainstorming who our fans are and their intentions and goals for participating in a Wimbledon fan experience. We identified the key phases of the tournament (pre, during, and post) and mapped what our users were thinking, feeling, and doing during each phase. This helped us to empathize with our users over the course of the tournament and identify some key questions: what are they feeling going into the tournament, how can we get them excited about what they’re about to and are experiencing, what data do they want to see and what questions are they asking?

We conducted a quick audit of other sports experiences our fans may participate in, whether in-person or virtual, and considered IBM fan experiences, like The Masters, The Oscars, and the Grammy’s, that also leverage IBM AI technologies. With the added hype of Wimbledon being in person again, after the 2020 tournament was canceled due to the pandemic, we made sure to consider both in-person and remote fans. We considered what an experience would look like if a fan could walk the virtual grounds of Wimbledon or receive live updates from IBM Watson on key matches to watch or potential upsets while on the grounds.

Bringing our concept to life:

Through several more brainstorming sessions, we’d landed on a concept: Winning Wimbledon, a bracket competition for Wimbledon. Fans are invited to join at the beginning of the tournament, set their brackets with each round with the help of Watson AI insights and predictions, and receive points with each correct selection that they can cash out to purchase gift shop items at the end of the tournament. With the quick ability to share bracket picks to social media, participating fans will entice their friends to join, as well!

Through a storyboarding exercise, we created a narrative story and happy-path flow for our end-to-end fan experience. Our experience strategist began mapping key IBM AI enablers and technologies to drive and support our narrative, while I designed the key screens. Our visual and content designer took our narrative story and got to work on our promo video.

In a few quick days (and maybe some late nights!) we had our final designs and promo video complete!

Winning Wimbledon—
A new fan competition, with IBM Watson

The Rules:

Pre-Match
- Select the winners for each match being played in each round (ie. First Round through Finals (1R, 2R, 3R, 4R, QR, SF, F))
- Use Watson AI predictions and data to make your decisions

During
- Follow along on the app and check out the scores if you can’t watch the live stream
- Check updated Watson predictions and data as the tournament progresses
- Compare match selections between you and your friends

Post-Match
- See the results of your selections and collect your points
- View Watson’s insights on what went well and how to improve your selections in the future

How to Win:

Pointing System
- Earn points for each correct selection/win
- Lose points for each incorrect selection/loss
- At the end cash in your points for a comparative dollar amount from
the Wimbledon Tennis Store