OUR JOURNEY
1
Coin Toss
Increasing student engagement in Longhorn Football away games
Longhorn football has put a lot of effort into the home game experience, such as games and refreshments on Bevo Boulevard and reworking the Big Ticket to be more accessible. However, there is much less excitement on weeks with away games. Some students find the game on TV, some have their own watch parties, but there is a lack of coordinated effort to increase engagement in away games.
Our group (Jackson Baird, Kristen Tibbetts and Tristan Stitt) is looking at ways to increase comradery and improve the away game experience for students and fans of Longhorn football. Jackson is a senior journalism major that is minoring in sports media. As a local Austinite, Longhorn football is very important to him. Kristen, a senior journalism and Plan II major, also grew up in Austin. She remembers hearing Smokey the Cannon from her childhood backyard whenever the Longhorns scored. Tristan is a senior journalism major and both of his parents are Texas Exes. Born in Austin, Tristan is a die-hard Longhorn football fanatic and wants the world to burn orange.
We have several goals that we hope to achieve through this project. The first is to provide students with more engaging opportunities to participate in Longhorn football even as the team plays on the road. This includes bringing more students into watching coverage of the game, but also participating in more hands-on ways, such as attending events instead of watching at home. We also hope to create an environment that builds excitement in the campus community throughout the week leading up to an away game, as if it were at home. The last thing we are striving to do is foster team spirit in people who previously weren’t interested or engaged in UT Football due to barriers to watching games or lack of community.
One possible solution to our “How Might We” question is by hosting an away game watch party at Darrell K. Royal Stadium. We think this is a great coordinated effort to increase fan engagement on away games. Fans will be allowed on the field to set up blankets to watch the game on the big screen. In order for the University to make a profit off the event there will be full concessions offered and a fee to get into the stadium that is reasonable for students. There will also be other carnival type games for fans to participate in on the field and giveaways throughout the game.
Another method we may utilize is to have pep rallies and team send-offs for select away games. This week, there was a parade and rally sponsored by Texas Exes to build excitement for the Longhorn vs OU game. This was a great opportunity to witness what these events could look like and see which elements worked and which would need to be tweaked. One thing we noticed worked very well was the inclusion of campus spirit groups. Including these groups increased attendance and excitement. It is also a win-win for the organizations because they used it as an opportunity to advertise their clubs. Some modifications we would make if we pursue this solution would be to have more pre-rally coverage and to block off Guadalupe Street both ways while the parade is underway.
Kickoff
Surveying stakeholders and looking for solutions
The whistle has blown and we are underway! In the next stage of our Longhorn Football journey, we sought out the stakeholders of our project to gather data and insights. We built a survey with some targeted questions and left space for people to give us their ideas and opinions as well. Our goal in this phase was to seek out the answers to our design challenge, but to let our respondents and stakeholders guide the process with their feedback.
We received about 50 responses to our survey and saw some trends in the answers to our questions. The majority of students who took our survey, about 70%, said they watch UT’s away football games - with friends or alone, at a bar or at home. About the same number of students also said they would be interested in attending events on or around campus to watch away games. Another takeaway from the survey was that about 76% of all respondents would be more interested in a UT-sponsored watch party or event for an away game. Respondents said a UT-sponsored event would draw more people, hold more legitimacy and would generate more school spirit at the event.
The other half of this inspiration phase of the project was research into similar organizations/projects and interviews with stakeholders. Our interviews yielded feedback that was in line with our survey answers. Generally, people like the idea of a larger event/watch party with available food and drinks. Watching with friends and other people, having more community around UT football, also came up in our interviews with students.
An important feature to creating this sense of community and social support came about in our research of similar community events. Looking at other social groups and community organizations, we noticed that having passionate leaders and informal ways to connect with others on a regular basis helped drive participation and involvement in events. We interviewed Brad Tillery, a member of the board of directors for Los Verdes - a supporter group for the Austin FC soccer team. Tillery said they have a robust online community in slack where members talk about soccer, but have the opportunity to connect and bond about anything really. This tracked with the other organizations we researched. We were also able to capture essential information for planning and coordinating events in town and the logistics of planning travel to away games.
For our upcoming prototyping, we hope to build out our own online, communal space for people to talk about Longhorn football and make connections. We are also going to visualize what our away game watch party events could look like. To keep iterating, we plan to conduct interviews and focus groups to show these prototypes to our intended audience and stakeholders to see what we may be missing.
Third Quarter
Back to the design board
The ref has blown the whistle and the second half of our Longhorn Football journey is underway! Following the feedback from our survey, we got to work on a prototype to show our stakeholders. Our goal in this phase was to find out at which of the four narrowed-down locations would people be most likely to attend an away game watch party. To receive this feedback, we created four flyers advertising watch parties at different spots around campus and Austin.
We met with two separate focus groups and asked them to rank the flyers and locations based on various factors. First, we asked that they rank the four flyers on design and visual appeal. Next, we asked them to rank based on which location they would like to see a watch party held. Finally, we asked the participants to sort the flyers by which party they believed would have the biggest turnout, regardless of their own personal opinion.
During the second half of this ideation process we met with Drew Martin, Executive Senior Associate Athletics Director for UT Athletics, and got valuable feedback from him about the possibility of the university hosting watch parties. He suggested that we gauge interest in a watch party at Republic Square downtown. According to Martin, this location is our best bet for allowing alcohol and food trucks because it is not directly on campus. He also said that it is his job to not only get UT students interested in UT athletics, but also the whole city of Austin, so this location would be a good opportunity to include the larger community.
These prototype promotional flyers differ in design, location and number of party details to spark ideas for our focus group participants about what they would be interested in seeing.
Through these interviews we learned that there is interest in a watch party at Republic Square and at the South Mall lawn. However, one of the pushbacks about having a watch party at Republic Square was the issues with transportation. Since Republic Square is downtown, the students we talked to seemed hesitant that there would be a large crowd willing to travel. They also felt that having a watch party on the South Mall would allow the opportunity for students to bring their own food, if desired. In the next ideation phase, we hope to first figure out if students are willing to take a bus to Republic Square for alcohol, or if they would rather stay on campus and not have alcohol sales.
A Back and Forth Contest
A recap of our work so far
We have come leaps and bounds from the conception of our project in the Digital Innovations class. We started out with just a “How Might We” question about getting people more engaged in Longhorn Football and ended up with a fully fledged idea for huge watch party events on campus. Human-centered design was at the foundation of our project and we always had the people we were making this for at the top of our minds. Throughout the process, we have relied on external stakeholders to provide feedback on the prototypes we developed. It wasn’t always easy, and at times we had to shift focus and come up with new ideas. However, we took care to make this project an intentional effort to meet the wants and needs of our audience.
We used multiple surveys to gauge interest and collect qualitative and quantitative data about where an away game watch party should happen and what needs to be there to attract people. For our first prototype, we created some promotional materials and basic sketches to showcase some more specific details of a watch party on or near campus, based on our survey results. A big “aha moment” came when we had an interview with Drew Martin, Executive Senior Associate Athletics Director for UT Athletics. That conversion gave us some serious insight into how UT Athletics has tried to engage students and fans in the past and the information that would help us better understand how to cater to them.
Next came another round of surveying and interviewing as we iterated with our second prototype. After our second survey, we learned that the best location for students was the UT Tower and South mall area. For our second prototype, we zeroed-in on this location and incorporated layout ideas based on the feedback from our stakeholders. Using more detailed sketches and adapting requested features and attractions, we took people through a simulation of a UT watch party, including where exactly students could sit, eat, take photos, listen to music and more. Our designs included huge screens to watch the game with comfortable seating all around, vendors for food and drinks, games and attractions, Smokey the Cannon for UT scores and a pep band to top it all off. We also had our participants rank the different features and identify which things were most desired and necessary. The feedback we received was very positive and we brought it back to Texas Athletics and our other stakeholders to see what’s next!
Preparing for Next Season
The off season has begun and preparations are being made for next season
Even after giving our final presentation, there is more on the horizon for Horns Hangouts. Our final goal is to implement Texas Football away-game watch parties for the Fall 2024 season, but there are a number of steps we need to complete to get there. First, we need to update Texas Athletics about the results of our prototypes and get their final approval for the food, games and activities that our focus groups suggested. The biggest change that came from our second prototype was the idea to have two screens: one at the South edge of the mall where students can sit on the grass to watch, and another in front of the tower. We need to make sure the university has the video and sound equipment necessary to implement this idea.
Next, we will wait for the results of the survey sent out to Big Ticket holders. Throughout this project, we worked with the Texas Athletics marketing team to finalize this survey, and the feedback we get will either supplement what we already know, or may provide some new perspectives.
Then, we need to finalize the watch party dates (in accordance with the Texas Football 2024 calendar) and create a concrete, realistic list of what tasks need to be completed before the event. It would be best to organize these tasks into ‘sprints’ with a point-person and deadlines for each sprint. Additionally, we want to set our expectations of success for each sprint, so that we can best evaluate our progress and better recognize if we are falling short of our goals.
For example, we need to finalize our marketing strategy, find event workers and volunteers, seek out sponsors and make strategic partnerships. We have already brainstormed some potential partners, such as Raising Canes. We need to continue exploring these options and maintain flexibility because we realize that the food and drink options at this watch party are an important factor in determining student participation. From our surveys this semester, we have come to the realization that the most successful event marketing would be through social media and with the help of UT spirit organizations. We would need to find a point-person for marketing who can make connections with student groups and find out which organization(s) are best-suited to help us with our goal of high student attendance. Then, we would coordinate with them to build a social media posting schedule that will drum up enthusiasm for away-game watch parties. We anticipate that with the Longhorn’s impressive performance so far this year, we will be able to capitalize on that excitement for their entry into the SEC next season.
