Chess Academy: Explaining a complex idea in simple words

The project: Grandmaster Babakuli Annakov wants to scale up his business. I’ve worked out the concept of an online teaching platform for a chess academy.

I explain the details of the design process in THIS CASE STUDY.

The platforms would allow students (amateur adult chess players) to receive customized assignments and choose between taking individual classes with a coach or group lessons or studying on their own.

 I singled out several themes that the participants kept returning to during the interviews

  • Winning and competition were the main motivations

  • Chess taught them life skills, such as thinking ahead and strategy

  • Playing is more enjoyable than studying

  • Chess creates a diverse community

 All these themes were reflected on the landing page. I tried to keep the text no longer than 3 lines per section to make it more readable.

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 I gave a detailed description of the features of the platform on the ‘Features’ page. I also included a page with pricing to gauge how much people would be willing to pay.

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I tested the pages with five people, three of them matched the persona characteristics, while two represented the other group of the Academy’s clients ( parents of school-aged kids)

Test results brought two big surprises.

  • People found the content intimidating because of its focus on winning and the use of chess terms ( even though they knew them)

  • They were more excited about tournaments and community. 

I made changes to the text and design based on the testers’ comments.

  1. I added black and white images to test this idea during the next round.

  2. The new text talks more about other areas where the Academy’s students succeeded.

  3. I moved up reviews about the school because all users said it would be the first thing they read.

  4. I made the message friendlier altering how I talk about progress and removing the chess terms from the graphic.

  5. I moved information about the community and tournaments up because all test participants showed excitement over this bit.

6. I changed the titles and the description of the membership plans to make them sound more positive. Although Bullet, Rapid, and Blitz are the three most common variants of the game, people associated these words with guns and war, but not chess at first glance.

Read the details of this project in a full case study that tackles product management.