Former major league player Barry Foote saw a business opportunity in the clumsy, inefficient, and aggravating methods scouts use to collect and share data about players.
We sketched architectures, systems, and built a prototype that offers a vastly improved user experience and increases the usefulness of the vast amounts of data scouts collect. Foote and his partners can now present stakeholders and potential funders with a proof-of-concept, backed by actual user research. Instead of just a business plan, they have a vision made real.
User Study
At spring-training camps, MAYA observed and documented the actions of scouts. Baseball scouts have a thankless job sitting in the sun and watching big kids play ball. But underneath the glamour is a truly grueling lifestyle. They juggle radar guns, stopwatches, pens, and paper to gather and record the necessary data at the game — all the while contending with wind, rain, sunshine, and glare. Time is crucial. It can take them 15 seconds to record information on each pitch. With only 30 seconds between pitches, looking away from the field for too long to record data can cause them to miss key moments of the game. Scouts later spend several more hours recomposing the data into reports they share with coaches, managers, and owners.
Information Architecture
We explored ways to make the data collected by scouts considerably more useful once it’s released from its prison of paper. Years of research for DARPA that MAYA can now leverage in commercial markets could result in applications that explore the scouts’ data in a repository, dramatically changing the way they analyze players and teams.
System Architecture
MAYA designed a hand-held device that reveals its functionality without explanation, allowing people to focus on the task, not the technology.
Interface
The interface on our device for baseball scouts allows them to focus on the game, not the technology. What once required multiple pages in multiple notebooks to record, scouts can now easily track on one consolidated, intuitive screen.
Results
F2 Technologies used our prototype to attract funding to pursue product development. A device like this could lead to the formation of new communities of users. Scouts, coaches, players, and fans could easily add and analyze data — and collaborate to find the next Cal Ripkin.