The 12th Man Foundation
UX DESIGN
ART DIRECTION
DIGITAL STRATEGY
WEB DESIGN
DEVELOPMENT
FUNDRAISING CAMPAIGN
Overview
In the rapidly changing world of college athletics, it is important for programs to continuously take advantage of initiatives to keep revenue flowing, and fans are the most obvious resource to target. Successful college athletics programs that aren’t taking advantage of digital spaces that connect with their fans in a genuine way are naturally going to fall behind in fundraising and revenue, and in turn won’t succeed on the field, court or even the classroom.
Texas A&M, a historic powerhouse in college sports, came to Charlotte-based agency Summit for help. There needed to be a trustworthy online resource that would generate a continuous culture of giving to the university. After numerous rounds of campaign strategy briefing, we conceptualized the 12th Man Foundation. 12th Man Foundation would exist as an all-encompassing fundraising platform and fan hub for a booming Texas A&M fanbase. Here, fans old and new could come to carry out the rich tradition of Texas A&M and connect through various initiatives, programs, and a sense of community, as well as contribute to an organic culture of giving that would raise funds for Texas A&M athletics.
Deliverables
• UX case study, user flow, and wireframes
• Art direction, high fidelity web design
• Ticketing software designed and developed, implementing Stripe integration
• New website developed
Discovery
But how could a university with such a global and diverse fanbase concentrate on what any given fan personally values for their favorite team? How could Texas A&M connect with their fans to encourage them to recurrently contribute financially? With the high volume of information that TAMU’s fundraising program offered, we needed to discover a solution and create a streamlined architecture of information —one that would allow for a painless and enjoyable experience in getting involved.
To prepare for the complex task of addressing such a large demographic of users, we asked our client to reach out to their fans in a survey via social media. These answers allowed some insight into what exactly a typical user would hope to achieve out of the new site, as well as address pain points where fans currently feel the university lacks in digital engagement. From there, we were able to create a few user personas to strategize the campaign around.
Definition
We learned what brings users to the 12th Man Foundation site is the common goal to contribute to future Texas A&M athletic success in their own unique and personal way. The collective mission that would connect every visitor, whether alumni, student, or fan, is championships.
The goal in creating this platform was to allocate a large amount of content carefully in order to cater to specific groups of users, while also coming full-circle to keep every user focused on the eventual outcome of athletic success at the highest level. To do this, we focused on four specific areas in which we needed to define user experience solutions for.
1. Creating straightforward categorization and filtering to help guide the user when browsing
2. Integrate ticket buying software where the ticket-buying process is made streamlined and undemanding
3. Allowing an uncomplicated user flow of donation and reiterate that any amount, large or small, impacts athletic success and student-athlete’s futures
4. Prioritize the overall TAMU mission, stress the spirit of competition/tradition, and create community
We began with a user flow to help figure out the boundaries of the user journey and think critically from their perspective. This also lead us to identify any necessary components or features the website would need before we began development.
Designing and developing
www.12thmanfoundation.com
At this point in the work flow, we have identified the key areas where we might address these solutions, and the tangible way our users would navigate through the platform. I then created wireframes and an interactive prototype to flesh out the web design and UI. Adhering to Texas A&M's official brand identity, I designed mockups for the ticketing hub and other key pages as well. Once our impactful, bold design strategy and creative direction of the new site was set in place, I completed the full-stack front end development, including checkout integration and a user ID database. This is a massive-scale, info-intensive platform that continued in growth and required consistent maintenance.
The first solution we identified in attracting and keeping an audience was to eliminate the obscurity in how to contribute to the 12th Man Foundation’s fundraising efforts.
The 12th Man Foundation also needed to exist as Texas A&M’s one-stop ticket center where fans knew they could go for a painless and streamlined ticket buying experience.
Donating and checking out can be considered a taxing process, so we decided to implement a feature to allow any user to recurrently donate to the 12MF in amounts as small as $1. We developed a payment interface allowing users to stay on the 12MF site to complete their transaction, rather than target directing to a third party service. The checkout process adopts an interactive SPA, dynamically updating to streamline the act of becoming a member and making the process of donating intimate and frictionless.
