The UX of the Olympic Games
Key UX Points:
1/ Focus on the user needs, and not the almighty dollar
2/ Don’t make your users have to jump through hoops to access your content
3/ Content is king
How do you get your Olympics fix? Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo news, CBS, ESPN, TSN, FOX, Notifications on your phone? Do you share results and news? Does it dominate office conversation? Is it a source of national pride?
The Olympics are a special type of event that occur every 2 years, alternating Winter and Summer. Why are they bigger in some countries than others? They are a special type of ‘news’ much different than the daily stories of current events, triumph and tragedy. With the summer Olympics, you have the major sports like Track and Field, Swimming, Rowing, Basketball and Gymnastics. For the winter Olympics, the big sports are hockey, speed skating, figure skating, curling and downhill skiing. The next time I profess my love of luge will be the first, but when a Canadian is on the track, I am ALL IN!
Olympics bring people together, giving everyone tremendous pride and a sense of community. But when you look at why people are all in on the Olympic experience, you have to consider the overall User Experience. This is a worldwide event, from the build up, the venue construction, athletes village, IOC scandals, and athlete doping tests. Teachers and schools make theme days to celebrate the accomplishments of athletes and the overall Olympic spirit. It’s the culmination of various sport world championships, events, meets, nationwide tournaments (sometimes 4 years in the making). How do we make that audience experience one that will draw people in, tune in, like, follow, share and consume the atmosphere over a 2 week period?
As a consumer, viewer and fan of the Olympics, my top priorities are:
1/ Watching the big events in LIVE, crisp and clear coverage. Isn’t it funny that not even 10 years ago — to watch live sporting events online without buffering was almost unheard of. Now, that is the expectation — I hesitate to say the norm because outside of CBC and the Olympics, watching real time sporting events in HD online for free, is relatively rare. I feel quite lucky that we’re able to watch the Olympics on our computers for free, and through the mobile app on our phones. March Madness is everywhere on CBS — and I get giddy thinking about live switching between games, ingesting that hot mess of basketball from noon to midnight, on the opening weekend!
2/ Find out when the big name Canadian athletes are competing and watch the LIVE feeds. That is really awesome that we’re able to do that to support our own. What would be even better, would be to be able to choose your coverage, and/or events that you watch. It would be like coming to the page — and seeing all of the sports that are LIVE or pre-recorded — and selecting the channel you want to watch.
3/ Keep me up to date. Really cool thing that happened as I had the CBC.ca web site open — was that I got an on screen notification (peek up window) of a Canadian medal winner (in an event that I was not watching), similar to a push notification on your phone through a mobile app. It was obviously very topical and unobtrusive giving me a direct link to the results. Given that I’m on the site, seeking Olympic information — this was exactly the kind of information and targeted content I was looking for.
4/ Interviews and good Canadian coverage. I like the Canadian angles and coverage most of the time. Obviously it’s critical as a news outlet to capture the emotion, intensity and gravity of the situation. It has to be well produced with slick graphics, clean interfaces and delightful animations. It has to be a big production on screen or it won’t feel like one in our hearts or minds. How many incredible stories did we hear of Olympians being in a hospital bed 1 year ago, and today they are on a podium hoisting a gold medal for their country, in front of 10,000 fans and millions of people watching online/tv.
5/ Immersive experiences. This is the way of the future that Intel that is spearheading now with new types of coverage with 360 degree views, VR and 3D camera angles etc. Now we’re able to see ski jumpers with drone footage. We are privy to some crazy angles never before experienced. The amount of data that is streaming is hard to comprehend, and will generate new found interest in some Olympic sports to various audiences.
6/ Raw Emotion. We love to see the triumph, but do we also want to show the tragedy? I think it’s that spectrum of emotion that makes high level athletics intriguing and exciting. Everyone is giving every ounce of strength, speed, heart and ability…and have (assumedly) trained countless hours over the past 4 years to get to this point.
7/ Access to Athletes. In this age of instant sharing, live streaming and feeds — we are given unprecedented access to athletes, pre, during and post competition. Some of the most intriguing and popular videos are those ones that go behind the scenes and give you an inside look of their life and processes. This is an avenue that some people search for and utilitize to their benefit, while some still prefer to shy away from the spotlight and constant media attention.
What are your top priorities? What makes it must-watch tv?
What are the pain points of the Olympics viewing experience?
Don’t cheapen that experience of being an ‘Olympic Champion’. Imagine the best Decathlete and Heptathlete being considered for sponsorship dollars on par with a 17 year old who hit snooze a few too many times the day of his race.
‘Scoring’ and ‘judging’ in Olympic events. (That is an article for another day though — Judging is screaming for robots, ai and machine learning so that its impartial, technical and infallible…and Yes, I realize removing the human element changes the game)
So many events that I’ve never heard of. Slopestyle, Ski-cross, Snow pipe? Does that generate interest in the Olympic narrative? How hard is it to be the best at your event, if there’s only 100 or even 1000 people in the world who do that sport at a competitive level? I think we can all agree, that there are some ridiculous events at the Olympics that qualify as an Olympic Sport. Flip side to that coin, is its gaining a new, younger audience and appealing to different groups of society.
Don’t make me sign in somewhere through my cable provider, and make sure I have the right channel package…its 2018 and stemming the free-flow of information just makes it more inconvenient for us- but those people determined enough will find and share — creating more issues for everyone. Is the ultimate goal to celebrate athletes, countries, and the Olympic spirit…or make people sign up for cable? Depends who you ask. For the consumer though, we want free, live and interactive content.
Live coverage can be a bit tricky as the most recent Olympics time difference was 14 hours. That means, on our primetime slots, between 7pm and 9pm, it is 9am — 12 noon. Primetime in South Korea is at 5am our time. Not ideal, but it could be worse. We could be watching everything on tape delay. NBC was roasted for that years ago but seem to have picked up their coverage. Nothing beats the live action, as it happens. So maybe live viewing (albeit inconvenient at times) is still preferred so you can watch history unfold, as it happens.
How can we improve the UX of the Olympic movement
Make a threshold of number of people competing worldwide, or number of nations, that have elite level competitors in that sport in question. Once you cross a threshold, determines whether not a ‘sport’ can become an Olympic Sport. 265 million people worldwide, compete in soccer, while as of 2014, there were 300 active registered bobsledders. I think we need to do something to preserve the integrity of the Olympics! Maybe an historically traditional Olympics, and a new breed of “International Games” or something of the sort.
Judging — instant replay, AR, VR and majority rule judging. This will help it maintain impartiality.
Online channels and live streaming, everywhere — or….worst case scenario, instant scan/pay to grant access within seconds.
No media rights and exclusivity granted to cable companies. All events are live streaming and archived, easily accessible for reference later. Easily viewed, edited, condensed, and circulated. Too many middlemen interject themselves and try to make a dollar. This will never stop, but one can always hope!
Make it thrive in the age of social media. The NBA and UFC have utilized social media to help grow their respective sports and some would say that there are no bigger sports. Social media is a tool, and everyone needs to adapt to that or be left behind.
How would you prefer to watch, interact, engage and consume Summer and Winter Olympics content?