Tennis RO App
Automating Tennis Line Calling & Supporting Tennis Review Officials to make the right decision
Fault!
01
As part of general routine maintenance to Hawk-Eye’s Tennis App suite, and with the addition of some new extended capabilities (data science advancement & Data viz), the project tasked us to consolidate our legacy tracking apps and merge them into x1 usable piece of software for external users (Review officials) to use.
Indirectly the app has dramatically bolstered fan’s experience!
To reduce the training time for new users to become proficient with our products & reduce the number of HEI operators on site. Leaning towards a SaaS product, there was a huge emphasis on UX.
External On-site Tennis Officiating Software that could be used for touch-screen & PC devices.
Deadline: Australian Open 2024
Graphics Team:
- 4x Developers
- 1x Product Manager
- 1x Product Designer (me)
Fans, Players & Umpires can now see close call replays instantly after a controversial bounce. The app enables a front-end UI to control automatically triggered Close-Call Replays.
More Foot-Faults have been called than ever before. Umpire’s can now call Foot-faults with confidence. Before, Foot-Fault cameras were on one of many monitor where users would have to watch these multiple screen simultaneously, live in the service motion.
Consequently, not many Foot Faults were called.
What is a Foot-Fault?
In tennis, players can’t step over the baseline and middle service line during their serve motion before hitting the ball. This rule aims to prevent players from gaining an unfair advantage.
Introduction of Automated Close-Call Replays & Wider App has dramatically cut cost for Hawk-Eye operationally:
x2
2 less Hawk-Eye operators are required to work on a game per court, per tournament.
The technology has ultimately reduce Hawk-Eye’s head count on-site & reduced the head count in the Tennis Department as a whole.
x2
We have reduced our tech deficit. By consolidating our legacy tech, we now have 1 app, making x2 apps redundant. These apps required constant maintenance. That energy can now be diverted into other Hawk-Eye products.
Instant Validation
A player, Coach, Fan & Umpire can now instantly see whether the ball was in or out & how much by.
This drastically has reduced disputes on court, upholding the professional standards of the game.
Our Problems Faced with Legacy Tech
02
Too many App integrations
There were x5 Apps (atleast!). Operators had to juggle when working on-site. Events typically had 6-8 outputting feeds too. There was a lot that could go wrong…!
Bad UX/UI
The dated & complex GUI’s Dramatically affected the time it took to train up new tennis operators. What’s more, workflows were slow and inefficient with years of work-arounds incorporated into Op’s setup to “get the job done”.
It was costly!
Inefficiencies & locally hosted technology meant the company was becoming more expensive than competitors. Change was needed!
Consolidating an MVP
03
Adapting our previous work to serve a new user
In a previous project, the squad and I had designed an app that allowed specialist Hawk-Eye Tennis Operators to select a bounce & manually control when to play a replay to broadcast & the stadium big screen.
-> The initial Bounce Vis app was designed for our HEI Ops, not for ROs.
Thes Tennis RO app ultimately was a further iteration on our previous work.
Summary of the Tennis Departments demands:
- For touchscreen native devices.
- For Review Officials, not expert operators
- The new UI needed to be simplified to be operated by new users who may know little about tennis.
- “Ohh and…. Need to be able to call Footfaults & Review video…!”
The feature complexity of the original project grew. So, we needed determine a realistic roadmap to meet our deadline of the Australian Open. We defined an MVP with senior tennis stakeholders. Using Miro we collaborated to draft up a feature parity list.
The Role of a Review Official (RO)
We also needed to agree on what we expected Tennis RO’s to do and what was beyond their job description:
Review officials (ROs) will be expected to:
- Officiate on line calling (albeit automated)
- Close calls are automated but ROs cancel the review to court if unnecessary.
- Check tracking health
- The system called the ball in the correct service box
- In the event of an error, Call HEI Op over for help & flag error
- Worst case scenario: Stops play & continuously updates chair umpire on progress.
Officiate on:
- Foot Faults via camera feed (for now until automated)
- Video review: Double bounces, Touching of Net
Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3...
04
Iterating
Validating against Review Officials & Stakeholders
We met stakeholders weekly to constantly review our design decisions. We conducted remote feedback sessions where we were able to learn fast and fail quickly…!
When we were satisfied with the app, I built a prototype to conduct an unmoderated usability test against ROs.
Early Draft
Failing Early
After a couple of weeks we presented this draft to stakeholders. The Officiating screen (Left) was heavily scrutinized. It seemed we had overlooked the needs of the RO during the design process.
Stakeholder Feedback
- Simplify the left panel, too much complexity for ROs to handle.
- Foot-Fault Cameras are too small
- Can we use the empty space on the screen better?
- How Might We… make decisions more clear & obvious?
Early Draft
Establishing an alert Hierarchy
It was evident from testing that not all notifications should be treated in the same hierarchy. Some alerts require immediate user attention, whereas others are informational giving user feedback that an event has occurred.
Early Draft
Consistent App Behaviours
I worked closely with the product manager to genericize a consistent app behaviour through all possible scenarios. The flow below is the app at its most complex – playing out a manually triggered replay.
Iterations from User Testing
05
Before & Afters
Court Graphic
For added clarity, Review officials wanted to know the court perspective they were looking at (ie. at what end the event occured). I determined a way, without add too much noise was to add an umpires region.
Service bounces were also marked with an “S” to quickly differentiate it from other bounces, improving navigation.
Before
After
Before & Afters
Improving The Cancel Replay Button
Our research suggested that cancelling a replay was not as intuitive as it should have been. To limit confusion I changed:
- language from “Stop replay” to “Cancel Replay” to avoid confusion with stop stop button (a term entrenched amongst tennis ops)
- Changed the progress button behaviour so there is always a consistent perceived affordance to cancel a replay. And added a timer counting down to alert the user the time available.
Before
After
Key Takeaways
06
Learning Outcomes
Working in an Agile environment
I worked in collaboration with many stakeholders to develop the product. I had to find the balance between feedback & too much feedback that hindered our progress…! Gathering feedback at a regular cadence was very important to the projects success
I'm now a bigger tennis fan!
The granularity required for this project enabled me access to test & interview some very cool tennis figures which has only fueled my love for the sport.
What Next
To what extent will this app disrupt the professional game?
Only time will tell for the long term impact this technology will have on the sport. We’ve now seen the removal of all lines officials from court.
Restrospective
We had a short retrospective to celebrate the project successes. Now, we’re onto the next product…!
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