Honda Center Mobile App

A dynamic mobile app purpose-built for sports & entertainment venues, allowing non-technical staff to manage content, enable friction-reducing services, and personalize fan experiences without relying on skilled designers and software developers.

Year
2022 - 2024

Client
OC Sports & Entertainment

My Role

Product Strategy

Design & Development Team Management

Inter-Departmental Program Management

In early 2022, soon after entering the OC Sports & Entertainment organization, our team was asked to head up the new mobile program for Honda Center & Ducks, while keeping a long-term eye on mobile needs for OCVIBE. We began with a streamlined Discovery phase, after which we set our primary goals of Reducing Friction, Elevating the Fan Experience, and Creating Operational Efficiencies. 

In year 1, we utilized a third-party mobile management platform. While we reached a user base of 40,000 over the course of the Ducks hockey season, and ran multiple successful marketing campaigns around the app, we encountered several areas of learning:

  • We noted that user acquisition and adoption required not just value-additive features but incentives to get over the hump of downloading an app and creating an account.

  • The complex integration framework required to create essential mobile capabilities led to tedious vendor management and confusing in-app UX for fans.

  • We saw first-hand how challenging it can be to align departments around an expansive organization and mobilize around a novel initiative.

In the fall of 2023, we launched our custom application and underlying management system. Our focus was to create a dynamic content environment that updated based on scheduled programming in Honda Center, while enabling users of the management system to personalize content based on key user segments. We also worked diligently to more seamlessly integrate key third-party systems providing digital ticketing, mobile ordering, and loyalty features.

We saw improvements in virtually all key metrics, taking advantage of hard-earned learnings and taking the next step towards scaling OCSE’s long-term mobile ambitions.