TIMELINE
Jan 2023 - Dec 2023
TEAM
1 UX Research
2 Product Designers
1 PM
TOOLS & STACK
May 2024 - Present
CLIENT
OVERVIEW
Just like Fantasy Football for the NFL, INDYCAR Fantasy Racing is a ‘racing’ themed fantasy sports product for INDYCAR motor racing series.
It allows fans to engage with the series by creating fantasy teams and predicting race outcomes.
Participants earn points based on the real-life performance of the drivers they select.
Through 2023, we conducted generative and evaluative research and created new mobile first design features for INDYCAR’s Fantasy Racing Game, with a view to enable greater in-game engagement during race events.
MY ROLE
Study Design & User Research UX Design & Ideation
User Testing
THE TEAM
1 UXR ( me :) )
3 UI Designers
1 PM
TOOLKIT
Figma
Qualtrics
MIRO
PRODUCT USER BASE
25,000 users
AVAILABLE ON
Web
Mobile (iOS & Android)
THE PROBLEM
Engagement with this product is concentrated within very specific timeframes. Designed as a fantasy sports game, it drives and facilitates user interaction exclusively during it’s key sporting events, i.e INDYCAR races.
There are 18 INDYCAR races each year, which represent 18 key engagement events.
Held from March to August, each race has a gap of about 1-3 weeks on avg.
Therefore, product engagement ebs and flows every 3 weeks. Like this
Race
Qualification
Race
Event
Race
Practice
APP ENGAGEMENT
Sat
Sun
Mon-Wed
Fri
RACE WEEKEND TIMELINE
Post
Race
67%
Retention rate (30 day period)
2m-3m
Session duration
2-4
Sessions Per User / Race weekend)
Product Challenge
The above metrics represent game engagement patterns during a race event, which translate to Low Avg Session Times and Frequencies. This means that race fans don’t utilize the product a lot during the course of a race weekend!
Business Challenge
INDYCAR intend to utilize this Fantasy Racing Game platform to incentivize and enable marketing and ad impressions for their most valued sponsors and therefore desire greater product engagement.
FRAMING THE PROBLEM STATEMENT
Formulate mobile first design features that complement the Fantasy Racing Game, &
Enable for greater engagement rates on the game for each race week
Appeal to INDYCAR’S diverse fan base aged 18 and beyond
Promote awareness of the sport
RESEARCH PROCESS
We needed to design a research study to understand 2 key user patterns
Usage Patterns
Understand how and when INDYCAR fans engage with the fantasy game building up to & in a race.
Engagement behavior before a race
Engagement events and triggers
Engagement behavior during & after
Gameplay Patterns
Understand how INDYCAR fans make critical gameplay decisions.
Gameplay decisions & triggers
Approach to gameplay
Usage Behavior
Survey
Distributed a mixed survey through INDYCAR’s official reddit page, receiving 72 respondents aged 18-64.
User Interviews
Recruited 15 participants from survey respondents, based on age, experience with the sport. Targeting 3 fan personas
Secondary Research
Analyzed existing literature on fantasy sports and general sports betting patterns and behaviors
Analysis and Synthesis
Constructing Timeline Maps to identify Opportunity Spaces
To identify opportunities in the gameplay journey for repeated interaction
SOLUTION OVERVIEW
A design overhaul to introduce new mediums and users flows to boost engagement and session length
Race Performance & Data Modal
The race performance and data modal is a single page layover designed to enable better in-game decision making for each race week with a detailed breakdown of current driver performance and statistics.
SCROLLABLE PERFORMANCE DATA MATRIX
How does this feature help
Experienced and active fantasy racing gamers conveyed that they ONLY utilize the game’s website or app to lock in their race picks. But spend 90% of their game process on external websites, researching driver performance.
Turns out that they spend about 90% of their time before a race researching on external motorsports news and media sites like motorsport.com OR INDYCAR’s official website for driver stats and performance data. Which was diverting user traffic away!
Race
Qualification
Race
Event
Race
Practice
INDYCAR’S Schedule accommodates for 3 practice sessions and qualifiers. Fantasy gamers chop and change their drafts VERY FREQUENTLY in this window
Sat
Sun
Mon-Wed
Fri
RACE WEEKEND TIMELINE
Post
Race
Re-designed Mobile First Game Play Experience
The race performance and data modal is a single page layover designed to enable better in-game decision making for each race week with a detailed breakdown of current driver performance and statistics.
SINGLE PAGE GAMEPLAY PANEL FOR MOBILE
Anurag Harishchandrakar
2025