Product Case Study: ESPN’s Draft Lobby Redesign

What product changes say about a company’s priorities

It’s a beautiful thing — when 2 of your great loves, perhaps ones that don’t have a lot to do with each other, intersect.

That moment came for me when I attempted to perform my first mock draft of the 2018 (fantasy) football season, and noticed that ESPN had redesigned their draft interface. I immediately went into Product Manager Mode, looking at how the different choices they made in their redesign spoke to their priorities as a product organization.

Context — A quick primer on fantasy football

I’m going to take a moment to explain the basics for those product fans who aren’t intimately familiar with fantasy football, but the rest of the article is going to assume some familiarity with fantasy football drafting.

For those unfamiliar with fantasy football, the premise is fairly simple, you and your friends form a “league” of 8–16 “teams”, of which you are the manager. These teams are made up of real NFL players, who compete each week in real professional football games. Your fantasy team gets points when the players you’ve selected accomplish various things on the field — catching passes, scoring touchdowns, etc.

The start of any season, and the most exciting part of any fantasy football season, is draft day, the day when you select the players that are going to be on your team for the season.

These leagues represent a significant amount of time, and often a lot of money, riding on them, so starting your team off right is a daunting, and exciting prospect. It defines what players you’re going to be watching out for when you’re watching football on Sundays through the end of the season.

The Before — The Legacy Draft Interface

Prior to this season, this was the UI you ran into when you were ready to start doing mock drafts.

Crowded, dark, and busy. Those are the words that come to mind. In this era of ESPN drafting, it was not uncommon for new users to not know how to perform their drafts, leading to unhappy players autodrafting Steven Jackson (sorry to throw you under the bus dad).

This is an interface for experts. Information is presented as efficiently as possible in an attempt to make it clear to fantasy managers that ESPN has all the information they need and more, to the detriment of the casual player.

2017 — Simplification and accessibility

image courtesy Android Police

Last year saw a shift in product priority towards accessibility for their fantasy sports with the rollout of an ESPN fantasy app.

Whereas other platforms like CBS differentiate on the basis of being the place for serious fantasy players, the decision to dedicate their resources towards building a mobile app, which is heavy on features like sticker packs which are obviously geared towards making new players feel welcome and comfortable.

The app is geared towards giving players the core functionality they need to play the game, with design principles of embracing whitespace and visually differentiating vital information from that which is nice-to-have.

Scaling up the mobile experience