Fan Zone

Executive Summary

Fan Zone is a strategic addition to the PlayOn Sports HQ platform, designed to empower schools to share branded, short-form content. Such as highlights and celebrations directly to social media, fostering school spirit and deepening community engagement.

As the Lead UX Designer, I owned the end-to-end experience, driving the feature from discovery through delivery. My focus was aligning stakeholder goals with user needs enabling athletic directors, media specialists, and administrators to effortlessly promote student achievements while maximizing fan interaction.


Overall Project Wins -

  • Led cross-functional collaboration with engineering and brand teams to deliver a solution that was both technically sound and visually aligned.

  • Future-proofed the platform with a flexible design built for growth, scalability, and long-term user adoption for sharing graphics, videos or any other content athletics directors or coaches would like to share.

  • Improved user satisfaction by designing an intuitive experience that received strong feedback for its ease of use and clarity for sharing on social media.

Role

Lead Product Designer

Company

PlayOn Sports

Company Size

500+

Bringing School Pride to Life

Before Fan Zone, schools struggled to share highlights and celebrations—manual tools, inconsistent branding, and complex workflows made it hard to engage their communities in real time.

As Lead UX Designer, I led the end-to-end experience: from research to wireframes to final handoff. I worked closely with athletic directors and media staff to design a tool that made it easy to create and share school-branded content, all while keeping student pride and fan engagement at the center.

Testing the Play

Once the initial Fan Zone concept was defined, I tested early prototypes using Maze, focusing on the template system and sharing flow. Real-time usability sessions revealed hesitation points and helped refine the experience.

We also spoke with parents knowing this platform is ultimately about their kids. Their input helped us craft an experience that was not only simple and effective, but emotionally resonant.

Blending usability testing, market research, and real parent feedback made Fan Zone a smarter, more human-centered product.

Research Methods & Inputs:

  • Usability tests surfaced pain points and guided design simplification

  • Parent interviews informed tone, clarity, and emotional impact

  • Resulted in an intuitive, familiar, and meaningful user experience

Designing the Experience

With a clear vision in place, I focused on crafting a user flow that made sharing content fast and effortless—even for non-technical users. I designed dynamic templates that automatically applied each school’s branding, giving staff flexibility without compromising consistency or quality. Users could quickly select a template, preview in real time, and share directly to social media.

Collaboration was key. I worked with Marketing to ensure branding accuracy and with Development to integrate the designs seamlessly. From specs to QA, I stayed involved at every step to make sure the experience was smooth, scalable, and ready to deliver.

The Result

Fan Zone delivered a simple, powerful tool that lets schools share dynamic, branded content effortlessly. With automated templates and a mobile-friendly flow, it empowered busy staff to engage their communities in real time.

Built through user-centered design and strong cross-team collaboration, Fan Zone became more than a feature—it’s now a scalable platform for school spirit and connection.

Major Wins:

  • Templates enabled quick, consistent content creation

  • Positive user feedback on ease of use and impact

  • Collaboration ensured strong brand alignment and technical performance

  • Platform designed for scalability and growth with users