How To Improve The User Experience Of NFL Football

This is obvious, I know, but usability and user experience is everywhere, and lately I have been watching a lot of NFL Football. While watching and appreciating some elements I noticed some fun stuff to discuss that is related to user experience and usability.

Sitting back and catching a game with friends is always good, unless your team is the Titans or the Rams. Sorry. While watching the games, I have to appreciate the usability and improvements to the experience they have thrown into the game’s broadcast for all us viewers. There have been hundreds of articles written about the yellow line first down marker, so I won’t jump into that, but have you ever tried to watch a game without it these days? It’s difficult. Every season they come out with a new scoreboard for the top of the screen or a new feature on top of the little yellow line. For all of these helpful and cool things they have done for the game, they have designed a few “improvements” that should still be evolved and a few things that should be designed to help not just us, but the announcers. If they help the announcers it will improve the experience of watching a game. No one likes a bad announcer.

While watching the games these past couple of weeks, I have noticed those small little yellow dashes that jump in and out of visibility at the top of those nifty animated scoreboards at the top of the screen. These little guys signal remaining timeouts and are an nice simple concept that has been around for a little bit. The problem is… I can only see these new little dashes when they are on a background that contrasts enough with the bright yellow. When play is going on though, the dashes conveniently line up with the multicolored crowd and those helpful dashes disappear. Now I am sure they have already noticed and will remedy the problem soon, but it was strange to me that I was now unconsciously picking up on these problems and immediately looking for ways to improve them. I guess this is the curse of a user experience designer. Discover a problem and find a solution. I just need to learn how to bite my tongue when I am not in the company of other user experience designers.

Above I mentioned the idea to improving the viewers experience indirectly by directly helping the announcer. I’m not trying to be a football snob, but sometimes I feel like the announcers have no idea what they are talking about or they are watching a completely different game. The problem is… they sorta are. Now, I am not making excuses for them, it just seems that they are not being given as much information about the game as they could have. We are watching the game sitting feet away from a big screen with multiple different angles, zoomed in shots, and slow motion replays, and these guys have to announce from a suite up off the field looking at those tiny little monitors that we viewers sometimes catch a glimpse of in the background.  Why don’t the networks help out the announcers a little bit with some of this awesome technology we, the viewers, get to experience?

So to NBC, FOX Sports, ABC, CBS, and to any of those other networks I may have missed, I have a few recommendations to help your announcers and improve your viewers overall experience while watching the next big game on the big screen.

1. Give your announcers big screens. Most of the announcers are older folk. Help out those poor experienced eyes of theirs with an over-sized image.
2. Show them multiple camera angles at once. They are probably smart people and can manage. When they are arguing about a completely obvious instant replay, it makes me think they are not looking at the same shots I am.
3. Last, I have seen that cool car tracking technology in NASCAR. Yes, I watch NASCAR sometimes. That gopher cam is awesome! Anyway, apply that cool car tracking technology to the major players and show a read out of their stats. When they claim LaDainian Tomlinson is in and it is Darren Sproles, it makes that frequently repeating rant about how LT is back, completely unnecessary. This would also instantly show off some interesting stats to the fans.

So, now that my random rant about football and the experience is over, keep your eyes peeled for usability improvements in different places other than the web. I am sure you know, but possible improvements are everywhere!