Scient Case Study: MLB

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Scient Case Study MLB

• Content Design innovations and UI

March 15th, 2001
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Premise
Scient provided an e-business platform for Major
League Baseball. Challenge Scient was
asked to deliver a common brand and technology
platform for the entire league of MLB, including
the re-architecture of 30 individual team sites
as well as the league's online portal. The new
entity for MLB would have the controlling
interest in all digital media related to the
entire league. Scient worked with MLB at every
level of their business. Along the way,
Scients Customer Experience team had to produce
dozens of data presentations that would visualize
and enhance the vast data and information of the
game of baseball. They needed some help...
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Influence Edward Tufte workshop

• A majority of the Customer Experience team
  attended Mr. Tuftes workshop. Disciplines in UI
  design, Visual Design, and Content Strategy were
  represented. The workshop immediately began to
  articulate a common language between the team to
  enable further collaboration. This common
  language was the catalyst for meetings, design
  sessions and changed the behavior of the group.
  It gave them the means to understand eachother
  within the context of solving complex problems
  within Major League Baseball. The team extracted
  a number of key principles to apply to their
  work. A few of them are mentioned here...

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General Principles

• Establish visual hierarchies.A content approach
  was established. The visual language was being
  considered. It was clear that every member of the
  team must understand the shape, size and language
  of each type of content used. The hierarchies had
  both visual implications and content hierarchy
  implications. Those metrics were measured against
  User feedback
• Use Color carefully
• Baseball had a distinct color language. So did
  its data and information. The challenge would be
  to balance them in harmony.
• Understand the content ( Intimately )
• What we didnt understand, our Subject matter
  experts quickly put into focus. Understanding the
  nuances of the data helped us put it in better
  context. The challenge is getting the team to
  become baseball experts.
• Integrate the Content
• Placing the vital information in the right
  context will present technical challenges.
  Solutions will be found at the intersections of
  editorial content, media, and statistical data.

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Old thought
CS gt UI gt VD

• The hand-off approach quickly broke down. The
  speed and agility of the team needed to depart
  from the serial thinking that created forced
  dependencies. The common language extracted in
  the principles allowed the different disciplines
  within the team to lead different modular
  displays and work collaboratively. The results
  allowed for smaller design teams to test-fail the
  systems in a prototype environment.
• 1) Content Requirements
• 2) UI Spec user-research and interface specs
  were derived.
• 3) Visual Design the design language surrounding
  the display of the information.

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New Thought
Content Design
Do them together The teams shaped the models and
then the models shaped the team, changing the
behavior and interactions of the team.
UI
CS
VD
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Example 1 Visual Hierarchies

• One example was how the visual design team began
  the process to design templates for the content
  displays. By using value studies and basic
  shapes, the team could suggest proximity and
  content type without committing to detailed
  design specs. The existing content hierarchy was
  tested against the templates very rapidly,
  allowing for customer feedback and rapid
  exploration. Complexity was added as the
  content specs began to take shape. Two principles
  were retained
• Starting simple
• Managing complexity

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1) UI spec suggests content scope and approximate
placement.
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2) dozens of value studies identify the
appropriate content and visual hierarchy.
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3) Complexity is added as the content
specifications become clear. A modular approach
begins to develop.
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4) Accurate depictions of content are added to
the value study until the UI functionality
balance the desired content hierarchy.Total
time 5 days
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Shifts in Content hierarchy were provided to
individual clubs to fit their needs.
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Example 2 Using Color Wisely

• During the development of the Value studies, the
  team began to study the colors inherent in the
  baseball language. Considerations to existing
  visual systems and brands were exhausted. The
  challenge to the team was to develop a modular
  system that would retain content hierarchy while
  maintaining a unique brand expression across each
  club.
• Maintaining hierarchy
• Brand Expression

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A decision-tree approach was used to address
both content and brand concerns.
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Example 3 Know the content

• One of the toughest challenges for each team
  member was to step outside of their discipline
  and embrace the content. Understanding the
  established language of baseball created
  significant challenges on what to re-design, what
  to enhance, and what to leave completely alone.
  To do this, the team researched the language of
  baseball, the history of the game, and
  interviewed dozens of Subject-matter experts. For
  phase one, two key presentation problems arose
• Enhancing established systems
• When to Creating new presentations

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Challenge 1) Present an interface that supports
over 270 points of interaction on a single page.
2) Maintain traditional method of expressing 9
innings. 3) introduce 3 distinct states of the
information.
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Solution 1) Remove chart-junk from the
existing system. 2) Leverage color language.
American League and National league context. 3)
Increase scan-ability across the display.
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Challenge Design a schedule interface that
shows information over time and context,
extending into a season-wide view.
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Solution Using Small multiples, the Customer
Experience team designed the Fun Bar, a
user-tested information display that showed the
entire season. The resulting design assisted
navigation and provided additional win/loss
information. The patterns in the data exposed
team streaks and slumps.
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Example 4a integrate the content

• Finding solutions to Integrate the content became
  the most technically challenging. Creating
  context between editorial narratives, video and
  audio media, and statistical information
  presented 3 dimensions of entirely different
  content and visual languages. The team extracted
  key two principles
• Put it where its most important
• Contextualize whenever possible

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Challenge Create an innovative way to integrate
media into editorial content.
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Solution Contextualize the media link into the
story. The solution set the stage to link
editorial gt media and and eventually statistics
in a three-way communication.
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Example 4b enhancing statistics

• Statistics for a baseball site are tickets to the
  show. Experienced users would navigate between
  numerous sites to locate and validate statistics.
  The critical success to improve this experience
  would be in the subtle enhancement of visual
  hierarchy, scan-ability, and visualization of
  data. Other than that, Leave it alone -- they
  would say. We like it the way its done
• Put it where its most important
• Contextualize whenever possible

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Challenge Improve the visual hierarchy of
statistics and large data sets.
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Solution provide sort-able columns for
context-driven displays. The cursor crosshair
enabled better analysis and reference points.
Highest values for each column were bolded to
increase the scan-ability of the data set.
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Bringing it togetherRarely was there an
opportunity to bring much of the principles
together in one specific area of the site. The
Player module became an opportunity to showcase
each player within the league. The resulted
differentiated MLB in how it showcased the
players throughout the league.
Content Module
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Challenge Create a scalable content module that
will leverage all proprietary MLB content.
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Findings
The Tufte Seminar provided a valuable language
and approach. By extracting the principles
and applying them to the specific engagement, The
design team was armed to confront difficult
problems. The arguments supporting the work
became easier, due to the content focus. The
dialogue surrounding the design process
facilitated change in the team and the client.
We only scratched the surface. The process
forced technical innovations and new perspectives
into the game of baseball. It enabled new stories
to be told and provided a foundation for future
work. The methods and principles were shared to
continue into phase2.
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Thank you MLB

• http//www.mlb.com