Dear Team Builder Team, do you need help? Are you okay?
Look, I get it. I've launched several web-based products/services in my career. It's really hard. There's a lot of stuff under the hood that inexplicably impacts other stuff that 'should be fine'.
But... guys... this team builder is... so broken.
Whats your process for usability testing?
Where are the super-user story cards for such a big undertaking? Surely you got real-world input and feedback from people in the community that were all about Franchise and what they planned to do with such features?
Forget the fact that it just doesn't work as advertised, this shows zero consideration for die-hard customers that got AMPED about creating their own 32-team fantasy league.
Questions? I have so many.
Why are there still only 5 stadium options, when there ARE extra stadium models that already exist?
Why can't you randomize player rosters in team builder instead of having the same 4 options? Every division would be a multiverse of the same players.
Why do some of the commentators call the team-builder players the wrong name? (Mike Tirico calls QB Flores something random/wrong. There's only 4 teams of names!)
Why are Kickers and Punters not even visible options to edit in Team Builder?
Why is the Nickname/Team Name reversed, causing the lucky few who built teams (and even fewer able to then download those same teams) to have the "CHICAGO CHICAGOs" as their team name? (causing only extra-savvy users who figured out it was a simple coding issue to put the wrong stuff in the right places to get it to display correctly)
Why can I spend hours building, saving, and uploading a team (most of those hours spent trying to figure out why its failing to upload) only to not be able to download that team in the game, only getting an "error - try again later" message?
Why can't I use my team builder teams offline?
Why is it that Team Builder Teams won't recognize the city if it already has audio lines for that city? If you build a Buffalo, Chicago, etc team and replace that same city in-game, you just get generic lines like "The Offense / The Home Team" when you could easily keep that team's city name for audio lines and exclude the mascot name.
There's too many more, but I'll leave it there.
FYI, in a proper user-focused product build/activation, you'd plan for these use-cases with 'stories' that essentially reverse-engineer these pretty obvious/low-hanging fruit questions and challenge the build/dev team to support these scenarios.
But I don't have to explain basic Human Centered Design principles to you, do I?
Source: I am a professional UX Product Owner / Creative Director who's launched million-dollar projects for global brands like BMW.
Final question: Seriously, do you need help? I would gladly do a UX audit for team-builder, as I personally want it to be AMAZING, and I am (clearly) disappointed in the initial product release.
When you don't address stuff like this, it speaks louder than if you did address it.
At least, like, tell us you know it's bad, don't sugarcoat it.
Tell us what you realistically will/won't/can/can't fix.
Support us the way we try to support you.
Set better expectations.
When you're mad that we're mad, it means we're onto something.
Xoxo,
Game Weenie
