Flying Axes
Empowering coaches to deliver the best gameplay experience.
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Two people honing their ax throwing skills at the Louisville Flying Axes location. All photography is courtesy of Forest Giant LLC.
The Client
Flying Axes is an axe throwing venue with locations in Louisville, Cincinnati, and Nashville. Unlike their competitors, Flying Axes utilizes a custom open-source edge computing platform. Through this connected system, coaches are able to control scorekeeping on any lane throughout the facility.
The Challenge
Flying Axes coaches had created new styles of gameplay that accommodated customers’ varying skill levels and interests. Our goal was to design a more versatile application to support existing and future coach creations.
The Outcome
We designed a scorekeeping app that incorporated the best parts of the original release, along with support for new games, features, and functionality.
The Team
I was the UX Design Lead and Project Manager. I worked closely with a UI Designer for the duration of this 3 week product discovery engagement.
Visit a Flying Axes location in Louisville, Covington, or Nashville to see the scorekeeping app in action!
Problem
The former scorekeeping app did not reflect the reality of coaching axe throwing at Flying Axes.
The original scorekeeping application was created before Flying Axes ever opened. It only supported gameplay and rules from the American Axe Throwing League.
Once the doors were open, the staff realized that the official axe throwing game is pretty hard. Most of the customers visiting Flying Axes have never thrown an axe before, so coaches started inventing games that would accommodate a variety of player skill levels. Unfortunately, the original app did not easily support these new games or beginner players.
The original app (shown above) was restricted to the American Axe Throwing League game. 3 games, 5 throws, no flexibility.
Research
“We have been trying to get more creative with games. I try and think of games they’re already familiar with, and then incorporate axe throwing.”
I planned and conducted interviews with 9 coaches during our product discovery phase. 5 sessions were in-person at the Flying Axes Louisville location, 2 sessions were remote group interviews with staff at the Covington and Nashville locations.
The biggest takeaways were:
League Game Difficulty
Customers who have never played before may only hit the board a few times - the league game isn’t fun for them.
Because no one is playing the league game, coaches have to do some pretty gnarly workarounds in order to keep accurate score with the app. They are also unable to correct mistakes.
SAFETY & Support
A busy Saturday night at Flying Axes can be very noisy. If a coach needs help from another staff member, or if there is an emergency, it can be difficult to get their attention.
CREATIVITY
Many coaches favorite part of the job was coming up with new games!
You can peruse the entirety of my research on Airtable.
DESIGN
How might we help coaches provide the best axe throwing experience for players of all skill levels?
There were 3 games that were loved by customers of all skill levels at all locations: 21, King of the Cage, and Waterfall. We decided to redesign the app to include these game types along with the original league game. A Free Play option was also included so that coaches would be encouraged to flex their creative muscles and invent new games.
Other updates included more flexibility with editing scores and correcting mistakes. We also included an “alert” feature so that coaches could discreetly notify the front desk if they needed help.
Our design process started on on whiteboards and quickly moved to Sketch. We utilized Google Material Design components so that we could make a testing prototype as quickly as possible. The prototype has been archived but is available upon request.
A photograph of our prototype Sketch file, which shows the first draft of the app.
TESTING + ITERATION
Coaches loved the simplicity and flexibility, but Waterfall didn’t quite land.
I planned and conducted 3 in-person user tests with coaches at the Flying Axes Louisville location. Our user test participants did not participate in the original interviews.
Our participants were thrilled to see an easy flow for correcting and reflecting on past turns in a game - no more crazy math acrobatics!
You can see the full test analysis on Airtable.
When we went back to the drawing board, testing data in tow, we decided to cut Waterfall. Our developers informed us that Waterfall would take much longer build. Ultimately, it just wasn’t MVP material.
SOLUTION
The new app gives coaches the flexibility to play their favorite games, create new ones, correct mistakes, and call for help if they need it.
Over three weeks of discovery, design, testing, and iteration my team was able to create a prototype and identify new opportunities for an improved customer experience, enabling Flying Axes to secure funding for their next phase.
The “Classic” game screen.
The “21” game screen.
The “King of the Cage” game screen.
The “Free Play” game screen.
REFLECTIONS
Looking back on this project, it’s amazing how much we were able to get done in just 3 weeks! This was, without a doubt, the most fun project I took on in 2019 - I felt like a game designer.
It’s amazing what you can improve with some good UX and fast testing. By leaning on Material Design for the UI components we were able to spend the majority of our time on strategy, research, and perfecting the user flow. The result is a simple app that enables coaches to focus their efforts on creating amazing experiences for customers.
Looking forward, there are still many UX challenges to dig into in future phases.
We only tested with 3 people because of the timeline, and they all worked at the Louisville location. More testing is needed with coaches from the other locations to truly vet this product.
With more time, we could have made more games! Had we had the time I would have liked to distribute a survey to all Flying Axes coaches in order learn which games were truly the most popular.
