ENHANCING THE FAN VILLAGE EXPERIENCE
SUPER BOWL CITY
PLAYER CARD & FAN WALL
With the Fan Wall and digital Player Cards, SAP’s Design and Co-Innovation Center created an immersive Super Bowl City fan village experience that bridges the physical and digital in a manner worthy of the 50th NFL Super Bowl.
THE APPROACH
The first thing the project team worked to understand is what makes a fan-village experience engaging and exciting for the range of people who might spend time in Super Bowl City. We mapped these insights against the goals of the organizations involved in producing Super Bowl City as well as the limitations of the timeline and technology that would power the Fan Energy Zone, and used this knowledge to create and prioritize ideas that would be desirable, viable, and feasible. Working quickly at a low fidelity, we put sketches of ideas in front of fans and the Host Committee early and often, improving each iteration through the feedback we received.
We focused first on creating a digital Player Card as we gained an understanding of what information was being collected each time a fan plays one of the games. We would then leverage that data to drive content for the Fan Wall.
Exploring initial ideas based on fan interviews
Collaborating across the different teams to craft the experience
Collecting feedback from project stakeholders and fans
PLAYER CARD
As visitors played each game in the Fan Energy Zone, SAP captured the data from their performances. We were asked to use this information to create personalized, digital player cards that fans would receive within the Super Bowl City app as they finished a game. These cards would provide fans with stats and insights about their performance and commemorate their time in the Fan Energy Zone.
Understanding how, when and why a fan would be receiving a player card was crucial to ensuring that it would be meaningful to their experience. Conversations with fans revealed that there needed to be two parts to the player card; one detailing their individual performance and another contextualizing it.
The final design of the digital player card featured a front and a back, similar to a traditional baseball card. Showcasing the player’s performance on the “front” of the card, there’s a focus on shareability, as something fans can only get by being there and having that experience; similar to keeping the ticket after going to a sporting event. The “back” of the player card utilizes the game data being captured to visualize and contextualize each fan’s performance against that of the other fans who have played the games.
SHAREABILITY
Fans showed us photos of tickets from concerts and sporting events that they posted online or framed on their wall. We learned that, for some events, just being there is worth sharing. We additionally looked for ways to gamify the experience to encourage participation, improving or completing the visualization to make it more shareable as a fan plays each game.
STATS-DRIVEN
With all the data being collected from each game we needed to understand from the developers what metrics were most important to performance, and from the fans what was most interesting. We designed the visualization to show fans how their scores compare to the leaders, and used the table to highlight the most important factors for each game that they should focus on improving.
PLAYER CARD – FINAL DESIGN
We gamified participation, creating ‘ranks’ through which you progress as you play each game from rookie to hall of fame. Your status is reflected in the progress bar and a changing ‘hero image’ intended to encourage fans to play more games.
We designed 32 different player cards using the logos and colors for each team so that fans would feel part of their favorite team. We wanted to reinforce that their participation and performance contribute to their team’s success.
REPRESENTING YOUR TEAM
REWARDING PARTICIPATION
CONTEXTUALIZING SCORES
We visualized the fan's best score in each game as a percentile of the leader's to show at a glance how they compare.
MEASURING YOUR PERFORMANCE
This table shows the key metrics for each game from your best round as well as the average of all your rounds. It gives fans an idea of the things they should focus on improving to increase their scores.
FAN WALL
The 50-foot outdoor screen overlooking Super Bowl City's main plaza presented a big opportunity to reach a large audience of fans passing through the area. Originally intended for game leaderboards, we quickly realized we could leverage this platform and the data being collected to make heroes of the fans who visit, further our partners' goals and tell other positive stories about Super Bowl City, the Host Committee and the San Francisco Bay Area.
UNIQUE DESIGN CHALLENGES
One of the big challenges we faced was designing for such a large outdoor screen that wouldn't be assembled until days before the beginning of the event. We used a pixel map on a partner's projector array to test our designs at the correct pixel density, though half of the size. Since Super Bowl City would be open both day and night, we used a high-contrast, dark color scheme so that it would be visible in the sunlight without being too bright in the dark.
DETERMINING CONTENT
From the earliest iterations we were thinking about screens we could design beyond traditional leaderboards. We wanted to highlight great individual performances to give fans a hero moment to remember. We wanted to leverage SAP's analytics expertise to identify trends in top performances to uncover insights. We also wanted to capitalize on the physical presence of the screen to broadcast the exciting moments at the games stations to the whole Super Bowl City.
FAN WALL – FINAL DESIGNS
 Top Performers by Game and Time |  All Time Top Performers |  Participation Leaders |
|---|---|---|
 Head to Head Team Stats |  Team Participation Leaders |  Head to Head Team Participation |
 Bay Area Participation |  Participation by US State |  International Participation |
 Live Game Area Video |  Game Performance Tips |  Live Fan Energy Zone Status |
THE OPPORTUNITY
For the first time in 30 years San Francisco won the bid to host the championship game of the National Football League (NFL); the Super Bowl. The game on February 7, 2016, would be the 50th edition of the Super Bowl, its biggest milestone to date. The San Francisco Bay Area Super Bowl Host Committee had a number of goals in mind when planning this momentous event; giving more to the community and having more content shared online than any Super Bowl in history, and showcasing the best of the Bay Area’s culture and technology. The Host Committee would accomplish these through a free-to-the-public fan village called Super Bowl City that would engage the whole community in the festivities instead of just the 70,000 lucky enough to go the game.
With strong ties to the Bay Area, Levi’s Stadium, the San Francisco 49ers and the NFL, as well as a history of technological leadership, SAP was a natural choice for the Host Committee to partner with in developing the centerpiece activation of Super Bowl City. The Fan Energy Zone powered by SAP consisted of three games for fans to play, one utilizing the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset and the other two using Kinect motion sensors. SAP’s AppHaus was brought in to round out a holistic experience marrying the physical and digital worlds by creating individual player cards to highlight fan performances in the Super Bowl City app and designing ‘fan wall’ leaderboard content populated by the data of registered users for the 50’ outdoor display overlooking Justin Herman Plaza.
THE RESULTS
SAP is not only a partner, they played an integral role in helping us redefine the Super Bowl.
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KEITH BRUCE
CEO of the Super Bowl Host Committee
