Pickleball Social App for Creating and Organizing Games
INDUSTRY:
SOCIAL
CLIENT:
X
YEAR:
Mar 2025 - Present
EXPERIENCE:
UX Design, Design Systems, Graphic Design
Pickleball Social App for Creating and Organizing Games
Pickleball is one of the fastest growing sports today, yet the player community struggles with fragmented tools for organizing games and tracking their play. The challenge was to design a digital platform that feels intuitive, reliable, and simple.
Understanding Users and Defining the MVP
Before jumping into wireframes, I prioritized understanding the product vision alongside real user needs. Our team conducted market research to see what existing apps offered and where they fell short.
I led user interviews with pickleball players to uncover frustrations around scheduling, finding compatible players, and tracking their history. One recurring pain point: many apps were either too clunky or lacked social connection features that players really wanted.
Mapping these insights into a user journey allowed us to spotlight friction points and define a focused MVP that tackled scheduling and social discovery first.
Building With a Systems Mindset
Our branding lead set the foundation with a design system built on Tailwind CSS and DaisyUI, ensuring visual consistency and scalable components.
I stepped in to extend this system by designing and documenting reusable components like alerts, navigation bars, and status badges—accounting for interaction states, edge cases, and responsiveness across devices.
For example, the Alert component wasn’t just a static element: I crafted variants (success, error, confirmation) with consistent spacing, color tokens, and icons to maintain clarity in important flows such as game confirmations.
Bridging Design and Development
Since the developers preferred Tailwind CSS, close collaboration was key. Weekly sync-ups helped us discuss design feasibility and iterate on solutions together.
A challenge emerged when developers made layout tweaks like personalizing the profile card header and reordering elements；sometimes diverging from our original components due to technical constraints.
To bridge this gap, I increased communication, shared detailed design rationale, and created comprehensive Notion documentation outlining component usage and design tokens. This shared resource minimized confusion and ensured smoother handoffs.
Reflection: Growth Through Adaptability and Collaboration
This project taught me the importance of designing beyond pixels thinking systematically about reusable components and anticipating edge cases.
More importantly, it deepened my collaboration skills. Understanding developer constraints and adjusting my designs without compromising quality showed me how flexibility and clear communication are essential in fast-moving environments.
Continuously iterating based on user feedback while managing technical realities sharpened my problem-solving mindset; balancing user needs, business goals, and engineering constraints.
