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UX Research 1:1 Interviews · Synthesis FanCode Shop · Dream Sports
Before a single screen was designed

Learning how India
shops for its teams

FanCode Shop was a brand-new e-commerce experience for fans to buy merchandise from their favourite teams and players. I owned the exploratory research end to end — a stakeholder workshop, fifteen in-depth interviews and an affinity synthesis that grounded the whole product in real fan behaviour.

15
1:1 interviews, owned end to end
2 wks
Of remote interviews over Zoom
8
Scope questions across the shopping ecosystem
Project Overview

A new business, grounded in evidence

FanCode is a billion-dollar Indian unicorn from Dream Sports, focused on streaming sports tournaments like the NFL and Bundesliga in India. For this project, I was responsible for the exploratory research behind a brand-new e-commerce experience inside the app — FanCode Shop — where sports fans could purchase merchandise and equipment from their favourite teams and players.

My Role
UX Researcher (end to end)
Timeline
March 2021 – June 2021
Methods
Stakeholder workshop · 1:1 interviews · affinity synthesis
Participants
15, recruited against a TAM-based matrix
Setting
Remote over Zoom (COVID outbreak)
Output
Insight themes + a defining user problem
FanCode Shop e-commerce experience
The product — FanCode Shop, the in-app merchandise store this research was built to inform.
Framing

Starting with a stakeholder workshop

Before talking to a single user, I ran a workshop with stakeholders to align on exactly what we were solving — and for whom. It surfaced the assumptions, the size of the prize and the vision the business held for FanCode Shop.

Who are our customers?

Defining the sports fans we were building the shop for.

What problems do they face — and how big (TAM)?

Sizing the opportunity and the pain we'd be solving.

How are we solving those problems?

Aligning on the approach before committing to a direction.

What's our vision for FanCode Shop?

And what e-commerce models already exist out there to learn from.

Stakeholder workshop board
Workshop — mapping customers, the problem, our vision and the competitive e-commerce landscape.
Research Planning

Clear objectives, tight scope

Objectives

  • Understand the sports fan / player's shopping ecosystem
  • Understand the blockers & motivations for buying sporting / fitness products online

Scope — the questions to answer

  • Where does a fan currently get their merchandise?
  • Do Indian fans even understand "sports merchandise"?
  • What product types do users buy online?
  • What's the decision factor for a purchase?
  • How does a user judge whether a site is trustworthy?
  • How strong is a fan's affinity to their team across sports?
  • What factors matter when buying sporting goods?
  • How important is genuineness of merchandise?
Recruitment Matrix

Recruiting 15 fans that reflect the market

Based on the TAM, I built a recruitment matrix and worked with a screener and a third-party vendor to scout 15 participants for the 1:1 interviews — deliberately skewed to reflect that most Indian sports fans are male.

Location

Metro cities — 4
Small cities — 4
Villages — 7

Age group

18–24 — 7
25–34 — 6
40–44 — 2

Occupation

Salaried — 5
Self-employed — 3
Student — 7

Sport affinity

Cricket — 6
Cricket + any — 3
Football — 3 · Basketball — 3

Gender

Males — 12
Females — 3

Total

15 fans

screener + vendor sourced

Fieldwork

Fifteen conversations, owned end to end

I conducted all fifteen interviews myself across two weeks, with a couple of colleagues assisting on notes and insight-drawing. Because of a COVID outbreak at the time, every session ran over Zoom.

Remote interviews over Zoom
The interviews — 15 remote sessions with fans across metros, small cities and villages.

Synthesising the signal

I documented responses in a structured notes format on Miro, aligned to the interview protocol and filled out live during debrief after each session. I then analysed everything, grouped insights into themes and built a labelled affinity map.

Affinity mapping and synthesis
Synthesis — notes clustered into a labelled affinity map across trust, brand affinity, ecommerce and merchandise.
Key Insights

What earns a fan's trust — and their money

Trust

  • Upfront info on COD, easy returns, exchanges, refunds & access to support
  • Recommendations from friends, influencers and reviews
  • Good design and imagery
  • Having an app — and good Play Store reviews

Best-in-class experience

  • Accurate delivery-time estimate
  • Timely updates on order status
  • Easy exchange & returns
  • Optimised CS with quick query resolution
  • Good post-purchase experience brings users back
Insights on trust and experience
Insight wall — the trust & experience signals fans look for before they buy.
Insights · Sports merchandise

Fandom, not fashion, drives the purchase

🎟️

Merchandise buying is tied to events — particularly when fans are attending or screening a game.

👕

Fans see little utility in sports merch after the match, and IPL jerseys crowded with sponsors are off-putting — minimalistic products win.

🏏

Many don't know the term "sports merchandise"; IPL fandom is driven by homage to a favourite player, bragging rights, tribe & respect from peers.

Insights on sports merchandise
Insight wall — what sports merchandise really means to the Indian fan.
The Defining Problem

One sentence to build a product around

All of the synthesis converged on a single, sharp problem statement that anchored every design decision that followed.

User Problem

"As an Indian sports fan, I am unable to find trendy, genuine, good-quality and affordable sports merchandise from my favourite team that I can wear daily."

Reflection

What this project taught me

🗣️

Owning it end to end pays off. Running every interview myself meant the synthesis was grounded in patterns I'd actually heard, not second-hand notes.

🧩

Recruit for the market, not convenience. A TAM-based matrix — skewed rural and male — kept the insights honest about who FanCode's fans really are.

🎯

Research earns its keep at the framing. The work's real output wasn't a deck — it was one problem statement sharp enough to design against.

UX Research User Interviews Affinity Mapping Synthesis Stakeholder Workshops E-commerce Recruitment
Next Case Study
FanCode Shop — Designing the store