Hello, I am Abdullah Abdulrazak, a graphic design student attending California State University, Sacramento. I am presenting this case study for my User Experience class project; where students were given the prompt to select an experience of their interest and are expected to enhance or build on the experience for its users. The experience that I picked is attending a sporting event at SoFi stadium. The reason as to why I picked this topic is for my passion for playing and watching sports. I chose SoFi stadium specifically because it is a newly built stadium that opened up in 2019, so for me, it was very exciting to implement new ways and innovations to enhance the user’s experience when going to a sporting event.
I mostly focused on attending a football game at SoFi stadium because it is the main sport that gets played at the stadium, and not to mention the SoFi stadium is home to one of the NFL’s biggest franchises, the Los Angeles Rams. The stadium is located in Inglewood, California, and it seats more than 70,000 fans during football games.
The project brief was to make five different “touchpoints” that guide the user through the journey of the experience from start to finish. Students were required but not limited to creating a minimum of five touchpoints in which all had to work together and play out as one cohesive system for the experience to be complete. The title of this school project is called “The Touchpoint Journey.” The five different touchpoint forms that I picked are as follows:
Awareness: Social media campaign
Planning: Landing page
Waiting: Wayfinding
Experience: Interactive app
Follow up: Nurture emails campaign
Going to a sporting event, especially at such an enormous place as the SoFi stadium, can be quite the challenge. Many issues can arrive whether fans are first-time goers or season pass holders who don’t miss out on any games, there are many small details that can go wrong at any time during a fan’s experience. Planning out and considering all the small details that may alter a fan’s visit is what I tend to prioritize when designing for this experience.
After extensive research and personal experience of going to sporting events I was able to identify the issues as follows:
Fans miss too much time trying to order food during games
Football matches usually last 2 to 3 hours depending on the games. The traditional way of ordering food includes leaving your seat, going to the food court area, and trying to find a food vendor that is suitable to your liking, ordering food, waiting for the food to get ready, paying, and walking back to your seat. A process that can take up to 30 minutes. That’s 30 minutes of missed game time solely dedicated to getting food!
Wayfinding in large spaces such as stadiums can be problematic
Stadiums tend to cramp a lot of information on signage and also spreads signs too far apart. It can get very hard for visitors to remember the information from one sign to another and usually results in hesitation and confusion.
Boring wait lines when entering a sporting event
There are many fans who decide to go alone to sporting events, and some end up with total boredom because of long wait lines leaving the visitor with nothing to do except wait for the event to start.
Buying tickets from third-party applications or websites
It can always be a hassle buying tickets from third-party apps because they can be misleading, usually more expensive because of reselling of tickets, and too complicated and confusing. With the large number of websites that sell tickets nowadays, it can get very overwhelming to find the best offer.
The multiple issues that arrived from my research reminded me that they exist in most, if not all sporting events and stadiums. The types of services offered tend to be very traditional, outdated, and exist throughout most stadiums that lack solid research dedicated to bringing the best experience possible for fans. it is important to think critically of the different possibilities that can enhance the fan’s experience throughout the whole journey of attending a football match.
Here are the goals for the updated experience that I plan on bringing to the SoFi stadium:
Order food through an app that notifies you when food is ready
Having an application where fans can order food from the comfort of their own seat is a critical component of enhancing the food ordering process. My idea is to have a page in an application that is fully devoted to diminishing the game time missed when ordering food in the stadium.
I plan to implement more clear and simple wayfinding solutions and in larger quantities spread throughout the facility
Stadiums tend to cramp a lot of information on signage and also spreads signs too far apart. I plan on focusing on the main circulation paths of fans that lead them to where the main event is happening and to their seating.
An interactive app that includes many activities to partake in prior to the start of the sporting event.
There are many ways to engage fans that are waiting for the match to start. If tailgating is not their preference, there will be many small fun activities to do throughout the stadium.
Buying tickets will be made easy and straightforward
I plan on taking advantage of the landing page to make it a place where fans can buy tickets at ease. I also plan on implementing the same system into the app so that they are familiar with the process.
As part of this project, students were given the opportunity to explore the current brand and expand on it or even rebrand it to give it a stronger foundation. For my project, I decided to rebrand some elements of the SoFi stadium. The original branding of SoFi uses a mark containing nine circles and subtle cyan color. As for the SoFi stadium; branding gets very inconsistent, it starts to use different colors, switching the whole brand from the cyan color to a purple hue with a slight gradient, and altogether gets very dull and not very interesting to look at.
This example clearly demonstrates how inconsistent branding is in terms of color and system.
My plan is to design a new logo for the SoFi stadium
I want to create a logomark that is simple and effective. The mark should work in black and white, at a very small size, and should reflect the energy and unique shape of the SoFi stadium. I also want to alter the type that goes with the branding and design a logotype that works in a system when used alongside the logomark.
My inspiration comes from the aerial view of the SoFi stadium
The SoFi stadium has a very unique triangular shape. The stadium is shaped with curves and round edges that give it a very energetic but also friendly and welcoming look.
I plan to take these pictures taken from an aerial point of view and start sketching out a possible logomark that also possesses the same friendly and energetic feel of the stadium’s architecture.