Sporting Schools

Helping schools increase children's participation in sport

Problem statement

Sporting Schools is an Australian Government initiative designed to help primary and secondary schools (below Year 10) increase children's participation in sport and connect them with community sport opportunities. The Sporting Schools platform accessed by over 8,000 schools and 1,500 sporting organisations was hosted on a Software-as-a-Service platform that was no longer meeting business needs, and no longer fit-for-purpose. The Australian Sports Commission funded a program to redesign the Sporting Schools platform in Microsoft Dynamics and PowerApp Portals as part of its Digital Transformation initiatives.

Sporting Schools is a grants program. Every quarter sports teachers at primary and secondary schools can apply for grants to fund sport organisation led programs. Sporting Schools administrators would then review and approve applications. The key challenges sports teachers encountered were:

• Platform didn't cater well for smaller and specialist schools
• Dependency on the role of principals in the platform caused delay in school applying for grants
• The platform navigation was complicated by being designed to suit teachers that are associated to more than 1 school, even though 98% of the 25,000 user base were only associated to 1 school, and only 1 teacher associated to 14 schools
• Grant applications were quarterly, sports teachers had difficulty remembering login credentials
• Usability of forms and menus, and information architecture was confusing due to some duplication
• Login flows didn't support self-help features like most websites teachers used in their daily lives
• The platform was not designed for mobile, essentially a desktop website.

Design process

Before the transformation program Sporting Schools platform was entirely developed by one lead developer. The program never had a designer in the team, and was generally not required to justify design decisions.

In the first few weeks as I began to document current state information architecture, user flows, and identify usability problems with key pages some of my ‘why’ questions posed some initial friction in the team. However, the lead developer was very experienced, and was open to seeing different approaches to current functionality and features. Working closely with the product owner and the lead developer we clarified perspectives, used data to drive decisions, and transferred ownership of design decisions to my role.

As part of the Digital Transformation program a Microsoft stack would be used for the new platform. Microsoft Dynamics CRM for administrators, Microsoft PowerApps Portals for the Sporting Schools web application, and Microsoft B2C for user authentication.

The current platform wasn’t designed for mobile (or tablet) devices, even though Google Analytics showed that 60% of users are accessing it on a tablet and mobile device. Given the front-end development framework used by Microsoft PowerApps Portals is Bootstrap, I recommended leveraging it to take a responsive design approach for the Sporting School web application. For the user authentication pages, Microsoft B2C, there are a number of constraints from a UX and front-end perspective.

It was important for the IT team and the program to bring Sporting Schools user authentication into Microsoft B2C. There was only one previous platform within the organisation that was using Microsoft B2C, I met with the Lead Designer of the Digital team to understand the user flows, processes he followed, and any constraints with Microsoft B2C. A designer and developer are limited to configurations of B2C, largely the background of B2C screens, some form fields, error messages, and colours for buttons. With these constraints, Collaborating with a developer, I designed two options for each of the common user flows (Sign in, Sign up, Forgot/Reset password), then met with the product owner, a business analyst, and developer to seek feedback and approval. On approval of the chosen option, next-steps were to collaborate with the business analyst to complete the related user stories so that they could be estimated, and assigned to begin development.

Whilst screen designs for Microsoft B2C were being developed, I collaborated with the team to plan and prioritise the two-week sprints for all screens, and user flows for the remainder of the program.

Following an iterative two-week sprint program, I collaborated with business analysts, developers, QA testers, project manager, product owner, and Sporting Schools stakeholders to design and handover all screens, flows, states, and components. As screens and features were deployed in test environments by developers I tested and documented differences between design artefacts and developed screens or features.

By mid February 2023, development was in a stable state to plan usability testing. I collaborated with the product owner and marketing specialist to identify testing participants, testing method, usability scenarios and tasks, and testing schedule. Once the plan was approved, I sent invites to participants, and conducted usability testing with participants, scoring post-task (Single Ease Question) and post-session (System Usability Scale). Once all testing sessions were complete, I rewatched each testing session, analysing what was said, and task success or errors.

I prepared a usability testing report, presentation, and actionable roadmap, which I presented to the product team, and Sporting Schools stakeholders. I then created user stories for all agreed actions from the roadmap, collaborating with developers and testers to finalise all screens and flows in the test environment.

Results

By late May 2023, Sports teachers from 8,000 schools could experience a fully responsive, WCAG 2.1 AA compliant, usability tested Sporting Schools.

Learnings

I felt and saw that all teams involved in the Digital Transformation program at the Australian Sports Commission embraced the challenges, including my learnings:

• Australian Sports Commission truly embraced UX role, and impact
• A UX function is fundamental to Digital Transformation programs
• Listening to experienced platform developers can super-power UX outcomes
• Constraints on user experience are common, and expected
• Australian Sports Commission understood the time needed to plan, recruit, conduct, and iterate usability testing findings
• Usability testing can be uncomfortable for stakeholders
• Users love (and expect) consistent UI components and functionality across screens.