Year: 2015
Agency: Lightmaker
Client: ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals)
Role: Lead Production Design, Mobile User Experience
Launch: Website
The ATP is the governing body of the men’s professional tennis circuits – the ATP World Tour, the ATP Challenger Tour and the ATP Champions Tour. With 62 tournaments in 31 countries, the ATP World Tour showcases the finest male athletes competing in the world’s most exciting venues. In order to remain a competitor among top sports sites, the ATP needed a new strategy and design for their digital platform – something innovative with a more rhythmic approach. ATP looked to Lightmaker to help define a new vision for their digital properties after a working relationship had already been built on trust and confidence after the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals project. Lightmaker jumped at the opportunity to rebuild the site from the ground up with fully responsive features that weren’t even an option with the original website.
Lightmaker was inspired by the incredible graphical assets that ATP has to offer from its past tournaments and decided to go with a clean approach offering a flat design focusing on strong player graphics. The design supported the intention of bringing the images to the forefront and keeping everything clean and simple in the background. Many features are based around galleries on the site to highlight action-packed photos as tournament photographers upload pictures instantaneously.
Mobile First Approach
Unlike the traditional “Desktop First” approach used when building and designing websites, Lightmaker tackled the challenge and built everything with a mobile first perspective, moving to desktop once the initial version was complete. The new ATP website is built on Sitecore, the industry-leading .NET Web Content Management System. ATP is using Sitecore 8 which offered a major usability overhaul for ATP content editors. The strategic plan to use Sitecore 8 was put in place to ensure content editors had access to the tools needed for designing a user-friendly site with an advanced content taxonomy.
Lightmaker deployed a team of full-time developers and designers and two project leads that began development in early 2014.
Live Scoring & Player Profiles
For the first time, ATPWorldTour.com will have live scoring integrated directly into the site. One of the major goals for the new site was the ability to pull live scoring into the site, so Lightmaker became fully engrained in tennis in order to fully understand all ethics of the sport – how the scoring should work, understanding the scoring ins and outs, what happens when a player retires, what happens if there is a last minute opponent pull out and how to indicate it on the site. During the Discovery and User Experience phase, Lightmaker used Axure, an interactive prototyping tool, to develop rapid UI and UX prototypes, allowing the ATP to see if there was missing content and giving them the ability to visualize what it would look like if a player was added or dropped from a match, for example.
Making BIG Changes Appear Minor
Lightmaker made big changes to bring the site into a modern state without making it unusable for dedicated fans that have been using the site for years. One very important change is the way the ATP presents sponsorships online. Using new and exciting brand activations like the FedEx Performance Zone, Lightmaker was able to integrate key sponsor activity without being overly intrusive. Consistency was key throughout the site when designing around advertising content making it possible for the same advertisements to appear on desktop, mobile and tablet devices, which ultimately drives higher engagement and commercial value for the ATP.
What’s Next?
After a well-deserved vacation, there will are a number of additional enhancements and new features ahead on the digital roadmap for ATP and all Lightmaker’s are excited to continue pressing forward on the success we have built so far.
Year: 2022
Company: Microsoft
Product: Bing Image Creator (AI image generation)
Role: Lead Designer / Art Director
Year: 2017
Agency: Lightmaker
Client: NHRA - National Hotrod Association
Role: Lead UX Design
The National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) is a drag racing governing body, which sets rules in drag racing and hosts events in the United States and Canada. With over 40,000 drivers in its roster, the NHRA is the largest motorsports sanctioning body in the world.
NHRA needed a digital platform that truly reflected the brand, increased commercial value, and revenue from sponsors, ticket sales, and provided fans with an immersive experience of the sport – all of this to be achieved prior to the start of the 2017 season.
Before the first engine started, Lightmaker successfully launched a fully responsive platform giving users access to live timing, race results and historical data while giving NHRA the ability to increase sponsorship and commercial opportunities.
Building the Right Foundation.
At Lightmaker, we have an extensive, well-rounded experience with a multitude of different cutting-edge web technologies. We can build on various platforms, but our ultimate goal is to create a foundation that meets a client’s specific needs. We achieve this by weighing all the options.
During our Discovery phase, we evaluated multiple content management systems (CMS) while considering NHRA’s need for an effective CMS that offers content editors greater control and ability to scale over time. Another key requirement was ensuring that the CMS did not complicate editorial workflows.
Lightmaker and NHRA ultimately selected Drupal 8 as the foundation for the new platform. Drupal is a leading open-source enterprise CMS that offers a standard feature set but is also extremely customizable. The platform allows for straightforward editorial workflows and enterprise hosting and developer support is available from Acquia with 99.95% uptime guarantees.
Mobile First Approach.
The previous NHRA.com was not optimized for mobile or tablet user experiences, though the traffic was skewing significantly to mobile devices. By launching a new responsive experience, NHRA’s commercial benefits and value is extended across devices and improves the overall user experience to make content and information consumption easier for fans.
Mobile is not a feature, it’s a necessity. The mobile experience on NHRA’s redesigned platform is just as fulfilling as the desktop. All content is available, all the time, on all devices.
Immersive User Experience.
In the end, the ultimate goal was to offer fans an interactive experience in which they can feel the energy of the sport. The platform offers event-based features that showcase relevant information that fans want to know in a timely manner.
Fans have unlimited access to live scoring during an event, post-race results, historical data, driver information, and everything else they need to know to fully immerse into the sport.
The user experience and design of the new platform also heavily considered the commercial needs of NHRA. Sponsorship and advertising features were integrated throughout the experience allowing NHRA to implement a new tiered structure for sponsors and advertisers.
The new digital platform has been well-received by fans many of whom have expressed positive remarks via social media and feedback gathered from NHRA.com. As we move forward, Lightmaker and NHRA has developed a roadmap full of enhancements to the platform as well as digital offerings that will compliment NHRA.com.
Year: 2016
Agency: Lightmaker
Client: LPGA - Ladies Professional Golf Association
Role: Lead UX/UI Designer, User Testing & Strategy
The Ladies Professional Golf Association is one of the longest-running women’s professional sports associations in the world. Founded in 1950, the organization has grown from its roots as a playing tour into a non-profit organization involved in every facet of golf. The LPGA Tour and the LPGA Teaching & Club Professionals (T&CP) comprise the backbone of what has become the premier women’s professional sports organization in the world today.
The LPGA sought a completely redefined digital strategy as part of their goal to better engage their fans and keep up with the growing popularity of their sport.
One of the LPGA’s key guidelines was to envision and deliver a new digital platform to distribute scores, stats and other key content through their main website, social channels and mobile application. This all falls in line with the LPGA’s mission statement which emphasizes passion, leadership, approachability and the importance of cultivating relationships with fans, sponsors and students.
Lightmaker took the LPGA through a detailed discovery and strategy process that included stakeholder workshops, content reviews, user experience prototyping and other collaborative activities which culminated in a series of deliverables that set the path for what would become the new LPGA.com digital platform.
The new LPGA.com features stronger social integration, and is designed to bring fans closer to both athletes and tournaments through detailed scoring data integrated directly into the website for the first time ever. Player profiles and tournament details offer an in-depth look into a sport that is exploding in popularity and allows the LPGA to capitalize on that growth. The site is fully responsive and offers a fantastic mobile experience for fans on the go, however Lightmaker also built a native LPGA mobile application for iOS and Android devices that offers features like following your favorite player and receiving push notifications for tournament updates.
With the new LPGA.com and LPGA mobile application, the association is now well positioned to maximize their digital resources to help grow women’s golf nationally and internationally and create new opportunities for the sport and its players.
Year: 2017
Agency: Lightmaker
Client: Universal Music Group Publishing
Role: Visual Designer
Year: 2015
Agency: Lightmaker
Client: Cheesecake Factory/ Grandlux Cafe
Role: Lead UX, Art Direction
Year: 2017
Agency: Lightmaker
Client: Internal
Role: Art Direction & Photography
Year: 2022
Company: Microsoft
Product: Bing - Image & Multi-media Search
Role: Lead Designer
Objective: Redesign detail page to support multiple content segments like images, travel, recipes and DIY projects.
Year: 2017
Agency: Dan Duarte Design
Client: Mightier Than Co.
Role: Art Director/Designer/Photographer
Mightier Than Co. is an independent clothing line & personal side project I launched mid 2016. My mission was to create a brand that celebrates designers, writers, illustrators, and artists of all kind who value the power of the written word. With that in mind i created a collection of shirts, greeting cards, enamel pins, patches and other gifts that not only embodied our vision but captured an aesthetic of contemporary graphic design, vintage package design and traditional tattoos.
View more at www.mightierthan.co
Year: Various
Agency: Dan Duarte Design
Client: Various
Role: Art Direction/Designer
Year: 2016
Agency: Lightmaker
Client: Seattle Sounders / MLS
Role: Lead UX / Art Direction
Prototype: Launch