Kraken + Climate Pledge Arena App
As the first employee devoted to the creation of the mobile app, Becca was involved in the entire process, from ideation to go-to-market. The timeline of the project is roughly three years, beginning in October of 2018.
The role.
As an early employee of the Seattle Kraken, Becca oversaw the creation of the mobile app from concept to release. In her role as product and design lead, Becca oversaw all stakeholder management, prioritization, requirements gathering, competitive analysis, and hired and trained the team.
No major sports team in the United States had ever sought out to build their own app in-house, and many were frustrated by the tight restrictions laid out by the various SDKs or league-provided solutions. This led Becca and the team to decide to tackle a challenge no team had yet taken on.
This required a staffing plan, competitive analysis, and a request for additional funds from the board and ownership group to complete the project. The team functioned as a small startup within a startup, with significant responsibility and room for creativity and innovation.
The challenge.
“One size fits all” solutions never actually fit right. Fans are often frustrated by limitations with ticket management, transportation to-and-from events and don’t feel the solutions provided to them are actually built for their region or team.
Additionally, teams have been frustrated with the lack of customizability, slow iteration times, and overall clunkiness of design.
The team decided to reinvent how technology is built within the sports and entertainment world. They wanted to iterate quickly, listen to the fans, and create a solution that was catered to the region, the fans, and the internal front-office team.
With a new organization, new arena, and fans entirely new to the sport: the team knew they had the perfect “blank slate” to do something just a little bit crazy.
The process.
In her role leading the team, Becca oversaw the process over three years to bring the app to market.
Initial competitive analysis, market analysis, and ideation sessions with the Kraken and Climate Pledge Arena executive leadership and ownership.
Comparative analysis of building in-house vs. hiring an outside firm for design/development.
Building a staffing plan, budget, timeline, and initial scope of the project.
Proposal written in Amazon’s “working backward” style, presented to senior leadership and ownership.
Wrote job descriptions, interviewed, hired, and trained a team of 12 designers and developers.
Developed prioritization lists, Beta schedule and requirements, and V1.0 schedule and requirements.
After team and arena branding release, oversaw the design concepts and “marriage” of the two brands within the app.
Stakeholder management for all feature sets.
Fan interviews, surveying, and data collection to help guide prioritization.
Oversaw schedule, prioritization and release over 18-month period.
Initial go-to-market and promotional plan in conjunction with marketing, sales, and comms.
Usage data gathering, prioritization, and schedule of future releases.
The result.
Released in October of 2021, the app significantly beat all projections and resulted in 165,000 downloads in the first 30 days and currently serves as the primary ticketing, transportation, and team information resource for fans throughout the Pacific Northwest and beyond.
Available for both iPhone and Android.
Below is a feature from the Wall Street Journal that features Becca as well as leadership from the Oak View Group. View the video via the link below.