Favorite team jersey? Check.
Ball cap? Check.
Stadium ticket? Check.
Don’t forget your iPhone.
Are you ready to take your fan experience to the next level? Cue fan music.
In honor of Mobile World Congress (MWC) this week I decided to focus my blog on a really cool mobile sports app framework that people in Madrid may not realize was co-developed by our very own developers at SAP Waterloo Labs. While I can’t promise my marketing side won’t get the better of me with this blog entry, I will try to frame it around the top 5 cool things you wouldn’t know offhand by just looking at this framework. Without further ado:
1. It’s richer than just a mobile app. While this may look like a screenshot of an iOS app on my left, what it represents is a fully customizable framework to augment any arena experience. The headphones symbol in the top right play music and sports content from an arena audio stream. The twitter feeds can be adjusted to follow any twitter handle specified, automatically refreshing live content. The score is also a live feed, so you never miss anything if you have to leave your seat.
2. This framework was created using Design Thinking in just 10 weeks. It was developed by two teams, one located here in Waterloo, and the other in Palo Alto. Let me also clarify that 10 weeks is not a lot of time to produce a framework that adheres to SAP’s enterprise quality standards. However, when you can design virtual development teams to take advantage of local expertise, this challenge can be met helped with steady communication through virtual scrums and common tools.
3. Consumer grade UX is more than just pretty screens. How about an address field that automatically configures itself based on your local country address formatting standards (how many Canadians begrudge fitting their province in a state field for example)? What about those innate gestures that every iPhone user has come to expect, like pull-down to refresh a screen? This framework was built with all of these interactions in mind so the user can easily navigate and most importantly – adopt it. That’s consumer grade UX.
4. Sometimes what you don’t see can be the real jewel. This framework plugs into an incredibly powerful SAP/Sybase 365 mobile commerce platform that enables financial and loyalty transactions. Imagine being able to offer a simple way to make in-seat purchases, earn rewards, and participate in loyalty programs? (I think it would certainly take the sting out of paying $10 for a stadium hotdog!) But wait, we also have other cool SAP technologies we can plug into with this framework (how about analytics, I hear we may also know a thing or two about that with sports…).
5. What kind of sports app framework would this be if it didn’t use gamification? However, how many apps can say you can play with the menu? Check out the screens side to side here – that puck you see can be shot with your finger into a net. Given this framework is customizable, this game can be adjusted for any sport – like basketball or soccer and net or football and upright. Those menu items also can be populated to point to other consumer based applications, like SAP’s photoTribe.
Can you believe this is SAP software (I mean I don’t see a traditional SAP GUI in site), for a new sports & entertainment market no less? This awesome framework serves as a true testament to the SAP that I work for today. The company that is really serious about UX and growing beyond ERP. The company that is gearing up to win the enterprise software super bowl.
Are you pumped yet? Ba na na na... Hey! Ba na na.
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