World Anti-Doping Agency
Athlete Central, the application of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), was designed with and for athletes to facilitate their everyday lives while helping in the fight against doping in sports.
What We Did
- Strategy
- User research
- User experience
- User interface
- Development
High-level athletes must provide their daily whereabouts so WADA can orchestrate “surprise” tests by its control officers. The application used for this was considered obsolete in its user experience and technology, causing a lot of frustration in the sports community. Nurun was tasked with resolving this.
An accessible, simple, and functional application that puts athletes at the centre of interactions.
Rethinking the mobile app
We began by conducting a discovery phase with WADA stakeholders and target audiences to determine context, expectations, and technological constraints. These findings helped shape the subsequent definition and realization phases.
Answering athlete needs
As part of our research, over 1,700 athletes were surveyed to see how the application could better serve their needs. The three main observations that came out of this were:
- The application greatly impacted their perception of WADA
- Managing location data was a source of anxiety
- Athletes needed an application that was functional
This redesign had to help athletes by anticipating and eliminating stressful situations so that they could focus on their sport and performance.
Easy to use, accessible, and smart
We worked to design a product that was easy to use, accessible (language, access with or without Internet, data security), and smart (notifications when information is missing, predictive alerts to inform time slots for “surprise” tests, travel times from one place to another, etc.). From an experience design perspective, this meant shorter navigation routes and reducing the user’s efforts by capitalizing on previously provided data.
A streamlined design
A clearer, simpler, and friendlier graphic design was key for rebuilding athletes’ trust, however we still had to respect the seriousness of WADA as an organization. This balance was achieved in various ways, including logo treatment, a colour palette inspired by location, rounded contours, iconography with rounded forms, transition effects, and no photos or illustrations.
Simplified maintenance
WADA’s technological legacy influenced development choices. All data and business rules for Athlete Central were grouped into ADAMS (Anti-Doping Administration & Management System) and to ensure its long-term maintenance and speed, Nurun developed a RESTful API. The Ionic framework was used so that only one code would need to be maintained.
For more details, check out the full case study: https://www.nurun.com/en/global/work/world-anti-doping-agency