Unit Verse

We’re happy to announce the launch of Ringstats, an online venue that provides a revolutionary way for boxing, MMA, and Muay Thai fighters, managers, and promoters to connect.

The site allows promoters and managers to search fighter profiles and send requests for event matchups; allows fighters to get exposure and research future opponents; allows promoters to promote their events; and allows anyone to find information on training gyms and upcoming events.

As an active participant in the boxing world, our client came to us with a clear vision for what was needed in these sports’ communities and a good idea of how his service should work. Together we examined the various needs and arrived at the likely solutions and the sorts of interactions that would facilitate these solutions as a simple, cohesive, and effective experience on the site.

Having crafted a clear strategy, we then worked with our client to name the site and create a compelling logo as the foundation for the identity. With the identity established we moved into the site architecture and user experience.

To our great delight, this project allowed us to be reunited with our friends at Vector Media Group, who worked to build the backend account systems and CMS for Ringstats. We each worked directly with our client and, of course, together on the UX functionality and then the integration of Vector’s work with our own. As usual, our teamwork with VMG was seamless and successful. What a pleasure.

Our contribution was not limited to design and user experience, but extended into content strategy, as well as the operational and functional strategy of the business. Here, our experience in concept-to-launch-to-promotion of online products proved effective. In the end both we and our client were confident in the choices made regarding the practical operation of the site, the business, and management of the content.

In our view, this project was an example of the ideal marriage of a good idea with a clear strategy and an unreserved investment of mutual trust in all parties. Have a look at the final result at Ringstats.com.

We’re happy to announce the launch this week of Tapology, the web’s first state of the art network for mixed martial arts.

Tapology is unique among MMA fan sites in how it pulls together a great deal of detailed information from the competitive MMA world, but relies mostly on the user’s input with bout predictions, community and individual rankings, and forum discussion to create a richly-detailed network of information for MMA fans. Tapology is concerned with mixed martial arts, but it’s all about the members who use the site. A site member’s activity and ongoing skill at bout prediction work to build a member’s rank on Tapology. This ranking system works to inform other members in the same way a reputation score might; only this ranking system is set up to be a far more accurate indication of the user’s MMA acumen.

Our client already had a very good idea of what they needed to accomplish and how when they first came to us. As the site requires a great deal of user interaction, we worked with the Tapology team at crafting intuitive and inviting interactive mechanisms to ensure user satisfaction and delight. The prediction mechanism, especially, is head and shoulders above other similar features on other MMA fan sites.

The design was crafted to highlight the content to its best advantage and ensure order and clarity. It was based on the visual brand guidelines that the Tapology team already had in mind. Technically, our approach was to exercise simple HTML and CSS to its best advantage to accomplish much of the interactive behavior, keeping the pages comparatively lightweight and quick-loading. There was liberal use of JavaScript for certain interactions, but simplicity and efficiency were the overriding guidelines for our front-end development. The Tapology team did the rest, implementing a powerful and elegant back-end to drive the website. The result is something of which we’re all proud and we’re very happy to have taken part.

Tapology: the web’s first state of the art network for mixed martial arts.