Engaging youth to play wheelchair basketball: an empathy journey
As an award-winning academic project, our team had the opportunity to understand Wheelchair Basketball in Canada and worldwide. Our client, Wheelchair Basketball Canada, came to us sharing their goal in bringing awareness among youth, and our journey started.
In this case study, you will find our journey beginning with secondary research and then proceeding with focus groups, data analysis, target audience definition, key insights, problem statement definition, and the design of a user-centred recommendation.
Secondary research
As UX researchers, it is crucial to understand the scenario that we will be working on and, more than that, understand who is our target audience. There are many sources where we can get information, such as academic papers, magazines, newspapers, blogs, and social media.
And based on secondary research, we identified some key aspects of the project:
-Able-bodied people are not aware they can play;
- Wheelchair basketball builds confidence in people with disabilities;
- Childhood is the best time to encourage someone to play.
Focus groups
The research could guide our path and started the empathy journey that we had to build to deliver a recommendation based on our user needs. However, we had to understand how the sport affects people’s lives from their perspective and what would make youth play wheelchair basketball.
This phase of the project was terrific because through focus groups we could talk to professional athletes, youth between 18 and 30 years old, subject matter experts, and the executives of Wheelchair Basketball Canada.
One of the athletes participated in several Paralympics and World Championships and even won a gold medal! Those experiences and personal life trajectories were fundamental to build empathy with our users. The sport changed their lives!
Athletes used their emotions to talk about the sport:
“If wheelchair basketball were an able-bodied sport, people would be all over it.”
“Wheelchair basketball is my drug of choice. It keeps sucking me back.”
Data analysis
From the focus groups, we had a lot of important data. We could also understand when the sport was introduced in the athletes’ lives and what would make them try a new sport from the youth’s perspective.
Analyzing our data through thematic coding, we could identify nine themes.
- 1: Positive experience with wheelchair basketball and sports
- 2: Sense of community
- 3: Engaging youth
- 4: Hard to find funding for Wheelchair Basketball Canada
- 5: Sponsors
- 6: Exposure and Education
- 7: Participant perspectives on the cost of the wheelchair
- 8: Inclusivity in Wheelchair Basketball
- 9: Wheelchair is hard to use
Target audience
Based on our data, we understood that we could engage more youth if the sport was introduced in their childhood, in school.
In this process, we built two personas: an elementary school student and a teacher.
Key insights
All the research conducted allowed us to consider critical insights that we would need to consider while thinking about a recommendation.
- Wheelchair basketball education and youth engagement with the sport should be promoted in a school environment.
- High barriers of entry for playing wheelchair basketball include wheelchair cost and the stigma associated with a wheelchair.
- People need to see wheelchair basketball as a fun and inclusive sport that brings people together.
Problem statement
At this moment, we comprehended that we would need to reach kids at school to promote the sport. But we had to assess all the possibilities to design a cost-efficient solution.
How might we engage elementary school students with wheelchair basketball?
Recommendation
Our recommendation’s ideation process was done using crazy eights and card sorting to organize all the potential ideas. And based on the focus groups, secondary research, and a human-centred approach, we decided that hosting a Wheelchair Basketball showcase event at an elementary school would be ideal.
One of the athletes interviewed said, “I’ve never met someone who’s watched a professional game of wheelchair basketball and left unimpressed”.
And we want to promote this experience to the kids in the school environment.
The clubs can introduce the sport and play an altered version of the game that can be played in a smaller elementary school gym. This school-hosted event can allow students to experience the game up close and get interested in participating in the local wheelchair basketball community in the future.
Storyboard
A storyboard was a great idea to express the journey of our target audience to our client. We showed elementary school kids getting the first contact with the sport from a teacher, being challenged, and getting engaged with the wheelchair basketball community.
Project showcase winner
I’m really excited to say that we won first place in the 2020 RE/Action Showcase of Applied Research, Innovation & Entrepreneurship at Algonquin College.
