The CEO of the sports tech startup IONSPORT personally recruited me to lead the design of an ambitious product ecosystem aimed at redefining the digital experience for racket sports.
As Product Design Director, I shaped the design strategy, mentored a design team, and led all UX and UI initiatives across platforms. My goal was to expand IONSPORT’s reach beyond professional officials, unify the experience through a cohesive design system, and clarify the brand’s value proposition across its ecosystem.
Under my direction, IONCOURT—the company’s flagship multi-platform app—user growth grew by more than 50% in just six months, becoming the #1 scoring and data platform for racket sports. This success marked the foundation for a connected, scalable, and fan-inclusive product ecosystem.
Objective: Ground the product direction in user insight
I directed a mixed-methods research effort — including intercept and remote interviews, remote moderated usability studies, and analytics reviews — to uncover experience gaps and behavioral trends across user segments. The findings revealed distinct challenges: officials were confident in using the platform for scoring matches in real-time but relied heavily on informal peer training; fans were often confused about the app’s purpose, faced friction during onboarding, and lacked meaningful post-match engagement; and leagues and teams sought turnkey digital solutions to engage their fan bases without investing in custom development.
These insights revealed a critical opportunity: by designing more intentionally for fans, we could amplify engagement across all user groups and strengthen the overall ecosystem. Fans represented the largest untapped growth lever — the key to expanding reach and sustaining long-term adoption.
Goal: Establish a shared understanding of user segments, business priorities, and success metrics.
I began by leading cross-functional alignment sessions with leadership, product, and engineering teams to reframe the challenge — shifting the focus from simply improving an app to designing a connected experience ecosystem. Through these sessions, I helped establish a shared vision and strategic clarity across disciplines. Together, we defined a north star vision for a unified fan experience: “to create a living ecosystem where every fan feels part of the game — anywhere, anytime.”
I then mapped the broader user ecosystem — spanning officials, fans, coaches, and leagues — to clarify roles, needs, and intersections in Figjam. To ensure design consistency and purpose, I introduced a set of experience principles to guide all product decisions, such as “Clarity over complexity” and “Engagement through context.” In partnership with leadership, we also defined quantitative KPIs for engagement and retention, grounding the design strategy in measurable outcomes.
This alignment established a strategic foundation that positioned design not merely as an executional function, but as a core driver of business growth and product innovation.
Strategic Shift: I reoriented our design priorities toward fan-centric growth while ensuring scalability and brand consistency.
My leadership focus centered on building scalable systems and processes to elevate both design quality and team efficiency. I established a design operations framework in Jira to improve visibility, prioritization, and delivery velocity across initiatives. In parallel, I developed a multi-platform design system in Figma that unified the experience across mobile, TV, smartwatch, and web platforms, ensuring consistency and cohesion throughout the ecosystem.
I also embedded accessibility standards (WCAG compliance) into our design culture — making inclusivity a core principle rather than a final checkpoint. To support faster iteration and alignment, I introduced rapid prototyping and lean validation cycles, enabling the team to test, learn, and adapt with agility.
These initiatives empowered a small, resource-constrained team to deliver with enterprise-level quality, speed, and impact.
Challenge: Fan acquisition relied on word-of-mouth, with high friction in discovering and following matches. Retention was poor due to limited ongoing engagement.
To expand engagement and strengthen the ecosystem’s growth loop, I delivered a set of high-impact design solutions informed by user research and business priorities. We implemented QR-based activation through social media and live event integrations, creating seamless entry points into specific matches and tournaments and boosting first-time user conversions.
To streamline access and strengthen security, we integrated smartphone native biometric authentication—leveraging AI-enhanced facial and fingerprint recognition—to deliver an instant, frictionless sign-in experience for existing users.
The navigation and content hierarchy were redesigned to emphasize live scores, players, teams, and events — increasing discoverability and user flow. To drive sustained engagement, I introduced follow, notification, and personalization features that encouraged daily interaction and deeper connection with the sport. I also refined the visual language and interaction design, ensuring clarity, accessibility, and brand cohesion across platforms.
These improvements reduced onboarding friction by over 30%, increased session time, and laid the foundation for scalable, organic user growth — positioning IONSPORT for continued expansion across its multi-platform ecosystem.
Expansion: To extend value and engagement beyond the core app, I led the concept and design of complementary products that transformed IONSPORT into a connected digital ecosystem.
The product ecosystem expanded beyond the core app to deliver connected experiences across multiple platforms. The smartwatch app enabled quick, in-match pickleball scoring for players and fans, bringing real-time interaction to the court. The TV app powered live digital scoreboards with dynamic, real-time data used by leagues and tournaments of all sizes, enhancing visibility and fan engagement during matches. Additionally, data-driven CMS templates provided leagues with a plug-and-play solution to embed live stats and match data directly on their own websites.
Each of these products reinforced the broader IONSPORT ecosystem, creating multiple entry points for users, strengthening engagement loops, and unlocking new monetization opportunities for the business.
— Fan-Centric Development: By consistently enhancing the fan experience within the app, user engagement naturally increased.
— Organizational Adoption: This improved fan experience attracted organizations, leagues, and tournaments globally, leading them to designate the app as their official scoring tool and promote it extensively.
— Rapid Growth: The combination of enhanced fan experience and widespread organizational adoption resulted in a 50%+ increase in user growth within six months.
— Market Leadership: This growth ultimately established the app as the leading racket sports scoring and data platform.
— Culture: Established a culture of user-centered decision-making across product and engineering.
— Design Systems: Introduced design systems and processes that improved velocity and reduced redundant work.
— Company Unity: Built cross-functional trust, positioning design as a strategic partner in business planning.
— Design maturity drives business growth. Building systems and aligning around a shared design vision created long-term scalability beyond any single product release.
— Accessibility is strategy, not compliance. Inclusive design broadened our audience and reinforced IONSPORT’s credibility in professional and global markets.
— Design leadership is orchestration. My role was not just to create design solutions, but to align disciplines, prioritize impact, and turn user empathy into business value.
Through strategic design leadership, I transformed IONSPORT’s fragmented product suite into a cohesive ecosystem that elevated user experience, accessibility, and brand trust. By championing research, systems thinking, and cross-functional collaboration, we unlocked a 50%+ growth surge within 6 months, positioned IONCOURT as the market leader, and redefined how fans, officials, and organizations experience racket sports digitally.