The Journey of DirtDuel
Nathan Berwager was brought up in East Berlin, Pennsylvania, USA. He is a business management graduate and extremely passionate about cars. He grew up working on and with cars. He is a former spring cars racer. His deep passion for car sports compelled him to launch a fantasy sports platform on dirt racing. When he contacted us to convert his idea into a reality, we couldn’t be more thrilled. We had created numerous fantasy sports website and mobile app on contact sports such as football and non-contact sports such as golf or cricket. But a car racing fantasy platform was something we were so pining to nail. No wonder, Nathan and Vinfotech became a winning team.
Dirt racing fantasy sports is a whole new concept. Will there be takers?
Of course, there will be. This was the belief with which we took up the project to create a fantasy sports website on dirt car racing. We believed that the concept may be new but the sentiments and fandom associated with dirt racing were still the same. Watching dirt racing championships on television was as virtual as playing the game on an online platform. Yet, the online platform engaged and involved fans deeper than just watching it on television.
Client's challenges & our solutions
- Can you execute a successful fantasy sports platform around a totally new sport?
The sentiments of sports fans are the same for any sport. We know how to channelize this fandom on a winning fantasy sports platform.
Dirt racing is not the same as fantasy football or basketball.
Yes, but having done a variety of sports, we will not have any problem creating a fantasy sports website around dirt racing.
I will also need several insights about running a fantasy sports business.
- We offer consultation on launching and user acquisition around any kind of fantasy sports business.
I want to be able to play dirt racing on an online platform.
I want to play the role of my favourite dirt car racing champion and compete against other players virtually.
Team Vinfotech approached DirtDuel with a fresh perspective. Our team was super excited to attempt a fantasy sports app development on dirt racing. Our developers and designers were ready to play with features and designs to make it a deeply engaging platform.
Market Research
We built upon our decade-long understanding of fantasy games research that we have carried on year after year to understand the evolving fantasy sports fans of dirt racing.
Engaging with users
We created user profiles from various groups in America – fans of dirt racing, television viewers and online gamers. This helped us short-list the features that we were to incorporate in the platform.
Business assessment document
In consolidating our findings and accommodating the vision of the dirt racing application, we created an internal document to see the various prize schemes, rewards and competition to be included in the application.
Creative workshop with client
We kept our channel of interaction open with Nathan and conducted a few workshops with him.
Wireframing
DirtDuel was focused on American dirt racing championships. We created wireframes that truly echoed the spirit of dirt racing. This gave Nathan more confidence in the project.
UI design
As always we kept in mind the two vital aspects of our design process. One, our UI had to echo the personality of the sport yet easy to use and navigate in order to balance amateur, middle-level and expert players. Two, the platform had to evoke an old brand’s trust right from the first sight.
Front-end development
vFantasy – our Fantasy sports software helped us to speed-up the development. We did quality analysis for user experience along with working on various aspects of the fantasy cricket website.
Development
Our developers were constantly referring to the feedback of some initial users who had tested the application at a very early stage. This helped us correct anomalies.
Testing
As we had to deliver the product quite quickly, we launched the beta version within the timeframe.
