NCAA Football 2023
College football is coming back.
Personal Project | 2022 | 2 months
What is the NCAA Football series?
The NCAA Football series is one of the most popular sports video games in history. The series has thrived since 1993, capturing the college football gameday experience with legendary game modes and customization. In 2014, the series was forced to be discontinued for not compensating college football players. Come 2022, however, the NCAA has implemented more fair rules for players to profit off of their name, image, and likeness. Thus, the series looks to make a legendary return by 2024.
Project Overview
NCAA Football means the world to me, and it means the universe to my friends. After hearing about NIL and the return of the NCAA FB series, I felt eager to investigate the world of opportunities out there. After all, this is just the start of a historic uproar making magic from college sports. Within this world, I took the hypothetical stance of a UXR Consultant for EA Sports.
To kick off this project, I picked the brains of 4 die-hard CFB fans with pizza, playtesting, and even crazy 8s. From these sessions, I recommended to delay the game and implement more features, and coincidentally, EA followed suit (in real life). With this fate, I continued research into the Fall of 2022, using a MaxDiff survey to prioritize new feature ideas. In the end, I couldn't be happier with this story, and the twists and turns it takes with such a passionate fanbase at the wheel.
Role
Research Design
Playtest Moderation
Research Ops
Pitch Share-Out
Tools
Pizza
XBox 360
Voice Memos
FigJam
UX Methods
Playtesting
Focus Groups
Participatory Design
MoSCoW
Clustering
MaxDiff Survey
Problem
Challenge
EA Sports produces two football game series: NCAA Football and Madden NFL. Over the years, the two have felt starkly different; while NCAA is built with creativity and spirit, Madden is fueled by modern game tech. With NCAA being discontinued since 2014, a question arises of how to best iterate on its past games without feeling like up-to-date Madden games.
With such a highly anticipated return, NCAA Football 2023 cannot disappoint; it needs to live up to the hype. To save disappointment, die hard fans are passionate about the game being developed completely separate from Madden NFL. To live up to the hype, NCAA FB 2023 should emulate all that’s changed in college football over the years. Accounting for all this, we must ideate with the fans themselves; this way, we can truly grasp the question: What must we keep? change? update?
Research Questions
🔍
What aspects of NCAA FB 14 help create the college football atmosphere? What new features do fans most highly anticipate?
The Case
Slide 1 of 58
Key Takeaways
Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working
During research craft, I spent ample time organizing which methods were most fitting to my research question; this gave me the idea to combine multiple methods methods into a fun, unique research plan. After the sessions, I carried this momentum into research analysis through rounds of affinity diagramming; in the end, the Miro board sat in a triangle shape, which inspired me to model insights off of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Altogether, I’m really inspired by how this hard work was met with inspiration throughout the journey.
Let the participants steal the show
Participants are your rockstars; the headliners. On the researcher's end, all I really provided was (1) the game and (2) pizza. From there, I learned that I can’t anticipate what happens next; I can only probe into where the participants take me. I found this so useful to learn as I practiced navigating UXR sessions, and even transitioning into qualitative research, this philosophy held true as a massive wave of NCAA FB supporters unexpectedly took the time to fill out my survey.
What would I do differently?
When I execute study sessions, it takes a little time to get in a rhythm and moderate smoothly. Next time, I want to ensure clear, concise directions during the start of a procedure, so that it kicks off the session on a right note. Otherwise, I might feel as though I’ve lost valuable data, whether I miss the mark on stating the study’s scope or even just describing thinkaloud protocol.
Thank You!
Want s'more? Check out more projects below!
