Blog Template - FanView
Project Overview
- Objective: To develop a sports blog template with animations, styled tables, and a modern layout, reinforcing semantic structure, accessibility, and visual hierarchy without frameworks.
- Target Audience: Sports enthusiasts, bloggers, and readers who enjoy consuming up-to-date sports news, stats, and commentary in an engaging, visually appealing format.
The goal was to create a modern, accessible sports blog template that not only showcased sports content but also provided a user-friendly reading experience. The design focused on animations to enhance engagement, styled tables for easy data consumption, and a structure that maintained accessibility for all users.
Research
- Competitive Analysis: Analyzed several sports blog websites to identify trends in content presentation, animations, and data tables. Focused on ensuring a balance between engagement and accessibility, making sure the design remained user-friendly and easy to navigate while still showcasing dynamic sports content.
- User Expectations: Users expect a visually stimulating, easy-to-read blog with clear data tables for sports statistics and easy access to the latest news and match updates.
Key Takeaways
- Users seek quick access to sports scores, match details, and trending articles.
- Accessibility and clear content structure are crucial for a positive reading experience.
- Modern, responsive animations can increase user engagement and interaction.
User Personas
Diego Lugano
- Age: 29
- Occupation: Sports Journalist
- Location: San Jose, CA
- Goals: Diego wants to stay up-to-date with the latest sports events and statistics while reading engaging sports articles. He also seeks a platform that can inspire his own content creation.
- Frustrations: Diego often finds sports blogs cluttered and hard to navigate, making it difficult to find specific content quickly.
- Behaviors: Diego browses sports blogs daily, prioritizing quick access to match results, statistics, and expert analysis articles.
- Needs: A sports blog template that organizes content clearly and allows for easy navigation to news, stats, and personal commentary.
David Miller
- Age: 40
- Occupation: Sports Enthusiast and Fantasy Sports Player
- Location: Chicago, IL
- Goals: David follows multiple sports and is particularly interested in detailed statistics for fantasy sports. He values speed, simplicity, and clear visual data.
- Frustrations: David finds it frustrating when blogs use complicated navigation or poorly structured data tables.
- Behaviors: David visits sports blogs for the latest scores, player stats, and analysis on matchups to guide his fantasy sports decisions.
- Needs: A clean, organized sports blog that makes it easy to view scores, statistics, and articles quickly, with engaging animations for a dynamic experience.
Ideation
- Sketching: Sketched layout designs that prioritized simplicity and quick access to key sports content, such as recent scores, popular articles, and tables for player stats.
- Wireframing: Created low-fidelity wireframes focused on a clean, modern layout with an emphasis on readability and easy navigation. Included stylized tables for sports data and a grid system for blog posts.
- Color Palette: Chose bold, high-contrast colors (e.g., white, black, spring green) to communicate energy and excitement while ensuring the readability of content.
In this phase, I focused on designing a layout that would not only look appealing but also allow users to easily scan for the most recent updates and data. The animations were designed to enhance user engagement without overwhelming the page's functionality.
Design Decisions
- Typography: Chose a bold, clean sans-serif font family, Proxima Nova, for clear hierarchy and easy reading. Headings were larger and bolder to emphasize key information.
- Visual Focus: Key data tables (like team standings) and match results were prioritized for quick access, with animations subtly guiding the user’s attention towards important updates.
- Animation: Incorporated subtle hover and fade-in animations for certain content, such as article thumbnails, improving the overall engagement and interaction without distracting from the content.
- Data Tables: Styled tables with alternating row colors and clear column headings to ensure easy reading and comparison of data.
The design decisions were aimed at creating a smooth, engaging experience for sports enthusiasts. I aimed to maintain a balance between dynamic, attention-grabbing elements and the blog’s primary function: delivering valuable sports content clearly and efficiently.
Prototyping
- Tools: Developed the prototype using HTML and CSS, focusing on animations and data table styling. No frameworks were used, as the goal was to showcase a clean, custom-built template.
- Interactivity:Incorporated smooth transitions for homepage content and hover effects on buttons, creating an interactive, dynamic user experience.
The prototype was developed with usability in mind, allowing users to quickly engage with sports content while also enjoying a visually stimulating experience. Animations were carefully chosen to enhance the user experience, making the blog more lively without detracting from the content.
Usability Testing
- Test Method: Conducted usability testing with 5 participants, focusing on how easily they could navigate the site, access articles, and interact with tables.
- Feedback: Users appreciated the clean layout and animations.
- Changes: Enhanced the contrast between rows using subtle background color changes and bold typography to improve title separation.
Usability testing revealed that the design was engaging and functional but needed slight adjustments to make the data interaction clearer and more noticeable. These refinements helped improve the overall user experience.
Final Design
- Final Deliverables: Delivered a polished, high-fidelity design in HTML and CSS, with all animations, table styles, and layout fully functional.
- Outcome: The final design achieved the goal of creating a dynamic, accessible sports blog template that was both engaging and easy to navigate. Key elements like standings and trending articles were easily accessible, and animations kept the page lively and user-friendly.
The final design was exactly what I envisioned: a sleek, modern sports blog that appealed to users with its simple layout, quick data access, and engaging interactive features.
Reflection
- What Worked: The combination of modern layout and subtle animations successfully kept the page engaging without overshadowing the content. The table styling provided an excellent way to present data clearly.
- Challenges: Ensuring that the animations were not too distracting and that the website maintained its accessibility was a key challenge.
- Future Improvements: Could explore adding real-time sports feeds or integrating social media updates to further enhance user engagement and keep the blog content fresh.
The project was a success, providing a solid foundation for a dynamic and accessible sports blog. In the future, I would consider adding more interactive features like live match feeds to further engage users.
Tools Used:
