At TribalScale, I was onboarded to work with the Product team at Sling TV. They needed an extra resource to conduct a research study on their ‘Sports Subscriber’ persona. Following the success of the first research study, Sling TV appointed me again to investigate why their newly introduced Watch Party feature wasn’t taking off as expected.
On both research studies I worked as the sole researcher with a Co-Op whom I also mentored (s/o to Nick Amirkhani and Joyceline Nathaniel). They supported me on the research activities.
On the Sling TV side, i collaborated with Data Analysts, a UX Manager, Product Design Manager and the Director of Product.
The final deliverable to Sling TV were research findings in the way of decks of which one was presented to their product and design team.
Context
The archetype and customer segment of the sports enthusiast was hard to establish as it sat between other audience segments that Sling TV targeted. Not enough was known about their pains, motivations, aspirations or even their journey using the Sling platform.
Framing and empathizing: research plan
We used a generative research approach that allowed us to disassociate the user from the product and see them, their motivations and aspirations outside of the product life cycle.
Research activities included: secondary research, user interview x 3 cohorts of 5 users each user journey map, persona generation
‘How might we nurture and engage sports enthusiasts on Sling TV thus boosting Customer Lifetime Value.’
Cohort creation
I worked with the data analysts and content marketing team at Sling TV to create user pool criterias in order to recruit the best candidates for an interview. Only those users who passed the screeners were invited.
Cohort 1: Sports Enthusiasts (SE’s) on competitor platforms
To discover how general sports enthusiasts consume sports on other channels
Cohort 2: Current Sling Customers who identify as Sports Enthusiasts
Find similarities in behaviours and expectations between the first two cohorts.
Cohort 3: Past Sports Enthusiast customers who unsubscribed
Better understand why they unsubscribed, what led to it.
Post interview synthesizing
The user interviews helped us flesh out the Sports Enthusias persona who we named 'William Watcher'; and helped us glean from their behaviours, motivations and goals around Sports consumption. Using these Nick and I mapped these out on a user journey map.
Highlights of Journey Mapping:
Final Research Deliverables
The final deliverable of this 2.5 month research study was an insights share out of low-hanging fruit and opportunities that were presented to the entire Sling TV Product & Design team, including the VP. of Product at Sling TV - Jon Lin.
