Case studies / Enthuse
Enthuse: rewarding fans for engagement
Overview
Sports teams didn't know who their most loyal fans were. Loyalty programs only covered season ticket holders, and fans had no easy way to earn real rewards for the time they put into following their teams.
Enthuse was a mobile app that fixed that. Fans followed their teams, checked in at games or while watching from home, completed photo and walk-in challenges, and redeemed points for rewards: team gear, local discounts, and once-in-a-lifetime experiences like throwing out the first pitch. Schools and conferences got a turnkey loyalty program and a new way to sell sponsorships.
I led Product Design and worked as a product manager on a small team: a CEO, a VP of Product, a lead engineer, and developers in France, Indonesia, Australia, and Boston. I designed the iOS, Android, and web experiences, and much of the marketing that put the app in front of fans at the stadium.
Impact
- Mobile-First Design: It was important to meet the fans where they were in the stadium.
- Localized: A fan needed to be able to open the app up anywhere in the country and find their local team to engage with.
- Engagement Metrics: For our University partners they had almost no way to measure engagement prior to Enthuse. So it was important to measure and show them how quickly Enthuse could scale among their fans.
- Scalable Designs: The Challenges, Rewards, Content Moderation, and Reporting needed to be turn-key for each new partner.
- Partnership Focused: We worked closely with partners to adds users, but also give fans actual awesome rewards that would keep them coming back.
University of Miami was Enthuse's first partner. In their first quarter, UMiami engagement was 2,325 completed challenges and 507 photo challenges. With how we designed Enthuse, the UMiami example was one we could replicate and scale to other orgs. Allowing Enthuse to partner with Atlantic Sun Conference, America East conference, Purdue University, and CSU Monterey Bay, the first Division II school on Enthuse, soon after.
"Winning the tickets was awesome... It was probably one of the best moments of my life."Matt Garbarino, Miami Hurricanes fan · Miami Hurricanes, March 2013
Story 1 of 6
Design beyond the screen
The moment
An app nobody downloads doesn't reward anyone. Most of our fans discovered Enthuse at the game, so the design had to work on a video board, a flier, a banner, and a TV broadcast, not just a phone.
What I designed
I designed the marketing that carried the app into stadiums: outfield video-board graphics for the Atlantic Sun Baseball Championship, built to the board's 1024 × 768 spec; First Pitch Challenge fliers for both conferences; in-arena signage; promo cards; a broadcast graphic; partner announcements; and the reward images inside the app.
What happened
The First Pitch Challenge became the signature reward. The fan with the most check-ins at the America East and Atlantic Sun championships threw out the ceremonial first pitch, and it was promoted everywhere from the video board to the press release.
Story 2 of 6
Lessons from the concourse
The moment
During a University of Miami vs. Florida State baseball weekend in April 2013, our team and student volunteers worked the stadium to get fans to download the app, then wrote up what worked.
What we learned
- Kids open the door. Free mini sport balls with a U on them had children begging parents to download the app, and the parents usually liked it once they heard more.
- Be a fan, not a marketer. One volunteer joined the milkshake line and got four people around him to download the app. Fans relaxed when the pitch came from another ballpark-goer.
- Place collateral where people pause. Fliers handed out at the main entrance worked because fans finished reading just as they reached the table.
- Avoid where people rush. Seating-area entrances failed. Everyone was hurrying to their seats, the food line, or the bathroom between innings.
- Luck helps. A Friday rain delay kept everyone on the concourse, and nearly all of that night's downloads happened during the delay.
What happened
That weekend produced 178 RSVPs, 137 photo uploads, and 111 check-ins, 30 of them from fans physically in the stadium. The biggest lesson for me was that distribution is part of the design: where and how people first meet a product matters as much as the screens they see after.
Story 3 of 6
Learning from user testing
The moment
In May 2013 we got back recorded user tests of the iOS app. Watching real people use it surfaced problems we had stopped seeing ourselves.
What we found, and what I'd do today
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Finding
The app asked for location and push notification permission back to back, before people had even used it.
TodayAsk in context. Request location when someone taps "Find teams near me," and notifications after they've followed a team.
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Finding
Alerts and full-screen modals interrupted people constantly, even for good news like earning points.
TodaySave alerts for real errors. Use a light, dismissible toast for points, like Facebook's "New stories" pill.
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Finding
People struggled to find Redeem, and after submitting a code the page stayed open as if something else needed doing.
TodayMake Redeem a first-class destination, and confirm with a clear message like "15% off redeemed. Your certificate is on its way."
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Finding
The profile screen was pushed onto the Feed tab's navigation stack, so a tester who tapped Feed later landed back on Profile and got lost.
TodayGive Profile its own tab or open it as a modal, and never mix tab and stack navigation in ways people can't predict.
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Finding
The event feed showed hundreds of identical "Person X will be watching" updates.
TodayGroup activity and show friends first, with everyone else collapsed into a single line.
Most of these are now standard mobile best practice. In 2013 we learned them the hard way, by watching people get stuck.
Story 4 of 6
Moderating fan photos
The moment
Photo challenges were one of the most popular features, and some of the most abused. Some fans uploaded random or inappropriate photos just to collect points. We had no tools to review photos or deal with repeat offenders, so the team was sending warning emails by hand.
The debate
An engineer prototyped a Pinterest-style infinite scroll of every upload, which made bad photos obvious at a glance. Our lead engineer pushed back. For an admin tool, a uniform grid is faster and more precise: with variable-height columns you can't predict where the controls will land. He also warned that reviewing every photo before it posted would be a huge headache.
My view was that we were solving two different problems. The real damage came from people stealing points, and only secondarily from inappropriate images. So I proposed rewarding only challenges completed correctly, and holding questionable photos until they were cleared. I also pointed out that the same tool could do something positive: flag great photos to feature in marketing, ads, and the app itself.
What shipped
We agreed on a short, prioritized list: flag a photo for deletion, link to the user to see or delete all of their photos or their account, and flag a photo to feature. The first piece was deploying within two days.
Featuring great photos was already working for us. Weekly photo contests were some of our best marketing.
Story 5 of 6
Making scoring points sound like a stadium
The moment
Earning points was the core loop of the app, but the moment itself felt flat: a number changed and that was it. A points app for sports fans should feel like the crowd just went wild.
What I designed
I designed the points animation, a big "+100 POINTS" that bursts onto the screen after a check-in, and paired it with a crowd-roar sound effect I put together.
The crowd sound that played when you earned points.
A small naming debate
Sound needed an off switch. I wanted to call the setting "Sound effects" because it sounded more theatrical and fun. Others pointed out that iOS calls this "Sounds". We went with the platform convention so it would feel familiar.
What happened
The sound and animation shipped in April 2013. In user testing a month later, a tester suggested taking it further: scale the applause to the reward, with polite clapping for 10 points and a full stadium for 100 or more. That was a great idea, and it's the kind of feedback that only comes once something is real enough to react to.
Story 6 of 6
The championship-banner download button
The moment
New features were coming on May 1, and people landing on enthuse.com had no obvious way to get the app. We needed a download call-to-action above the fold, fast.
What I designed
I designed the button to look like a championship banner hanging from the rafters, the kind every arena has. At rest it shows "Enthuse App, free on iPhone and Android." On hover, the banner slides down and the iPhone and Android buttons appear. It sat in the top corner of the homepage, where every visitor would see it.
What happened
I sent the first design on April 9. I was asked to get it implemented right away, and a front-end developer had it in the repo and ready to go live by April 14, less than a week from first mockup to shipped.
Conclusion
Enthuse was where I learned to design the whole experience, not just the app: the sound of earning points, the banner that gets someone to download, the tool that keeps the community honest, and the flier in a fan's hand on the concourse.
It also taught me to watch people use what I build. The user tests and stadium debriefs changed my thinking more than any internal debate did, and that habit carried straight into the ten years I spent designing feedback and analytics tools at Wootric.
Press
- Enthuse raises $1.3M from Greystripe co-founder and others to help sports teams reward their fans. TechCrunch, December 2012.
- The America East Conference partners with Enthuse to engage and reward fans during Baseball Championship with First Pitch Challenge. America East Conference, May 2013.
- Purdue partners with Enthuse for fan loyalty. Purdue Athletics, May 2013.
- America East partners with Enthuse for fan loyalty program. America East Conference, December 2012.
- Fans get Enthuse for Otter sports loyalty program. CSU Monterey Bay Athletics, January 2013.
- Canes fan wins tickets with Enthuse. Miami Hurricanes, March 2013.