Designing a cross-platform experience

Goal posts are moving for telecommunications in Australia.

Optus want to extend their offering starting with the living room. This lead to the controversial move of purchasing the EPL rights from Foxtel.

The goal of the Optus Sport project was to create consistent cross platform experience that honours "the game" and pleased its strongest fans however they watched.

Key Tools

Key Skills

Cross-platform design

Data Driven Design

Material Design

Apple HIG

Challenges

Research showed that fans of the game often consumed EPL content across several platforms often simultaneously.

This meant creating a suite of apps that leveraged each platform's strengths in a way that best served they way EPL fans watch the game

Apple TV & Smart TV

Big games, means big screen.

Due to the time difference, watching live often meant crashing in the lounge room of the one mate who had Foxtel!

This underscored the importance of having Live games prominent on smart TVs and streaming devices first such as Apple TV, Google Chromecast and Fetch TV.

LEVERAGING THE DETAILS

Each TV platform had its own advantages we leveraged to provide fans with a richer experience. For example, on Smart TVs there was less UI constraints, so we were able to use more of the brand colours in the user interface's navigational elements, mirroring the brand identity seen on mobile platforms.

Apple TV by contrast, was more limited to a template like navigational structure but we were able to utilise a layered 3D parallax effect to make each match 'pop'.

Apple TV & Smart TV Focus

Live Games
Replays & Mini matches

Support for device streaming
Simple sign-in without signup

iOS & Android

Mobile was often used by fans as an accompaniment to the 'big screen' to review stats and highlights to understand how the teams compared and how their team fared.

Mobile was also a popular platform for watching smaller match replays or games that didn't necessarily involve their favourite team

Mobile added deep dive stats such as team & player rankings, table and match statistics. To avoid spoilers, a simple show scores toggle was created to conceal these facts before watching a game.

In addition to this, support for Chromecast and Airplay streaming were important additions to get this extended content such as match replays and news to the big screen.

Mobile Focus

Stats, Lineups, highlights with 'no spoiler' toggle
chromecast and Airplay

Live games, mini matches and commentary
In-App signup and personalisation

Responsive Web

Like mobile, web was the most common platform for finding out English Premier League Results and extended statistics.

The differentiation was that Laptop/desktop fans tended to use the platform to multitask, simultaneously analysing, placing bets, chatting on social media and even watching multiple games or highlights in different tabs.

A partnership with Vimmond allowed us to design picture in picture and 4 way streaming so that die hard EPL fans could do this all in the one player window.

Responsive Web Focus

Picture in picture
Fantasy football

Fandom & Social chat
Live, Replays, Stats and Recaps.

Sensational

Well done OPTUS you have done a great job I love the soccer coverage and this App is really easy to use and I like how the scores are hidden and the mini match it's a great idea

-Aviationbuff78, App Store

Way better than Foxtel!

The app is fantastic. The ability to watch games that have already started by going back 3 hours is great for someone who can't always get up to watch live is perfect. The mini matches is a great addition as it gives you a good 20 minute snapshot.

-Ferrari312t, App Store

Effortless

Well layed out app,works with Chromecast effortlessly

-Michael Backvall, Google Play

Innovative

Lots of content, intuitive UI. Really like the 'mini-matches' which is like an extended highlights in 24 minutes. I find it ideal when I've missed the live game the previous day. Also a good thing is that scores are not mentioned in the video titles. So if you are careful enough, you can watch the mini match without knowing the result in advance.

-Varun Menon, Google Play

Highly recommend

Was an avid Foxtel supporter and vowed not to get Optus Sport in protest. So glad I buckled. Hope Foxtel don't get the rights back for the EPL to be honest. Love how simple this app is and love the different formats of viewing the matches (mini matches etc).

-Regan Betteridge, Google Play

The Score

The Optus Sport suite was launched on time in July 2016, ready the English Premier League season and was in high demand.

The platform was a success for Optus and has expanded to accomodate Cricket (The Ashes & BBL), the FIFA World Cup and the ICC Cup with more sports expected in the pipeline.

2018 - 2019 Optus Sport Stats

1,100 Matches streamed 3000 Hours watched 15+ Million Social Media Followers