Designing a Scholastic Sports Platform Across Competing Stakeholder Needs
As a solo researcher, I designed and conducted an independent qualitative research study for RideCAT's transit app—highlighting the early wins, like real-time tracking, identifying unseen adoption barriers, and defining measurable paths forward to improve both rider and driver satisfaction and operational success.
Digital ad via Collier Area Transit
Project Details
Company
Aktivate
Team
Myself; Engineering team of six and offshore frontend development vendors
Role
Sole Product Designer; Interim PM
Methodology
Usability testing, In-Person Interviews, Journey Mapping, Wire framing, Brand System, UI design, Hi-fi prototyping and mockups, Strategic Planning and Stakeholder Management
Timeline
2021-2023
Overview
Aktivate is a B2B and B2C scholastic sports management platform serving K–12 schools across the country. Athletic directors and administrators use it to manage student sports registration, compliance, and team communication. When I joined as the sole product designer, the web application was functional and in active use — but overdue for a full rebrand. A greenfield mobile communication app was also on the roadmap, with ambitions to expand the platform into messaging, fundraising, and beyond.
I owned end-to-end design across both products — research, wireframing, UX/UI, brand system, and marketing — while managing external vendors and stepping into an interim product management role when needed. A significant part of the work was navigating what users needed with the business realities, and finding ways to close the gap incrementally across five release cycles.
THE PROBLEM
There was a tension between what research surfaced and what the business was positioned to build.
Alex Driehaus/Naples Daily News/USA TODAY - FLORIDA NETWORK
Key Learnings
The most significant learning from the beta wasn't about a feature—it was about positioning. Parents and guardians already had communication tools they used across all of their children's activities. What they actually wanted was an easier way to register their student athletes and monitor progress on mobile—something the web application wasn't yet equipped to offer.
When the communication app launched without that capability, parent expectations didn't match what they found. The mismatch generated feedback to customer support and contributed to adoption challenges. The finding didn't immediately change feature direction — resources and priorities were already committed — but it sharpened our understanding of where the platform needed to go next, and reinforced that marketing promises and product reality need to be in tighter alignment from the start.
We built what the business required, spent five cycles closing the gap — and came out with a clearer picture of what the product needed to become. The gradual updates lead to slow adoption and usage over the next two years.
10x Team Growth
30 teams at Beta to 300+ after one year
1,000+ users
across coaches, students, and parents after two years
My Role
As the only designer on the team, I was responsible for all design decisions across both products. I conducted and synthesized user research, ran discovery sessions and stakeholder workshops, managed external design and development vendors, and produced everything from wireframes to a shipped brand system. When the PM role was vacant, I stepped in to handle cross-functional coordination and built a company-wide Notion hub — a single source of truth for work in flight, used by the C-suite and non-technical functions to track status, metrics, and business value without getting into engineering details.
Research & Discovery
Research was continuous throughout the project, not a front-loaded phase. I conducted user interviews, usability testing, discovery sessions, and stakeholder workshops with athletic directors, administrators, coaches, and parents — supplemented by analytics once instrumentation was in place.
Preliminary research identified many of the platform's most critical needs early: Spanish language support, emergency contact access, compliance safeguards for adult-to-minor communication, and parents' preference for mobile registration over a new communication tool. But business priorities and funding constraints meant the founding team's core vision — the communication app — had to ship first. The research didn't disappear. It waited. And as the platform expanded to new schools and beta feedback arrived, those earlier findings became impossible to defer — moving up in priority one release cycle at a time.
Scope & Constraints
Interviews and surveys were done over nine days (between March 29-April 29, 2021) at a major transfer hub and onboard buses. I was the solo researcher and all work was done pro bono with no budget, but some printing and translation resources were provided by CAT.
Some other challenges of the study were:
Covid-19: PPE was required onboard as well as adherence to distancing and sanitizing, but some riders were still weary of talking or touching anything. Masks made it difficult to communicate with riders at the transfer station, as the buses were idling and it was hard to hear. This caused people to move closer to try to understand each other and that was not ideal for social distancing.
Language barrier: The population included Spanish and Creole speakers. CAT provided a translator for two intercept sessions and I was able to make a Spanish language version of the paper survey.
Sample size: The study was designed to be a snapshot in time, and with only one researcher
Recommendations
I recommended focusing on three areas to address immediately to boost engagement, user experience and operational goals:
Glitches & User Experience
The study further validates the need outlined in the Ten Year Development Plan for updates to hardware and examination of the systems currently in place. Fixing the cause of those glitches will address the user experience of the app. It would be ideal if CAT was able to work with Masabi to customize the app, however if it is not possible, then passing along rider feedback and feature requests is recommended.
Learnings
The two findings with the most immediate product impact were notifications and Spanish language support. Notifications were moved up in the sprint cycle after parents said directly they wouldn't check the app unprompted. The scale of the need for Spanish translations became undeniable once schools were actively using the product. Every other finding below also had a clear path from insight to shipped feature.
Finding
Without a notification, parents said they'd forget the app existed. Some responded to email more reliably than push notifications, so both channels needed to be addressed.
Response
We implemented push and email notifications earlier in the sprint cycle as a direct response to the insight from research.
Finding
Spanish language support was non-negotiable. Many schools had large Spanish-speaking populations for whom the app was immediately inaccessible without translation.
Response
Spanish language translation moved from a future enhancement to an active priority once real-world usage made deferring it untenable.
Finding
Coaches needed to broadcast without noise. They needed to post game and practice updates and admin notices without open replies from students or parents.
Response
A one-to-many announcement channel where only coaches could post. Students and parents could read but not reply.
Finding
Peer-to-peer bullying and inappropriate language or image sharing were concerns. And adult-to-minor communication posed a compliance risk.
Response
We added tiered coaching permissions, content flagging, and an Athletic Director-level view to pull communication logs for compliance investigations and enforcement.
Finding
Lack of Emergency Contacts in the app were a safety-critical gap. Coaching staff needed immediate access to a parent or guardian contact for each athlete in case of emergencies.
Response
Emergency contacts tied to each athlete's profile, linked to their verified guardian — also serving as confirmation of registration status before students could join the platform.
There were six steps in the process of developing and testing this product.
1. Review Ten Year Development Plan
A development plan was released in October 2020 detailing improvements in all areas of the transportation system over the next 10 years. I reviewed this for insights into CAT’s goals and ideas for what to focus on in the research.
CAT has technology goals outlined in section 7.2.7 Technology Trends that aligned with my research and I was able to validate some of their goals.
2. Gather Stakeholder Insights
I interviewed CAT marketing, operations, planners and the director of operations to get an idea of where they were focusing efforts for the app and what they had discovered so far about the app usage.
CAT provided their route data as well as Masabi’s app data, which included stops and number of tickets used at stops over a 3 month period. This steered the research locations and times to reach the most riders, and specifically riders who used the app.
3. Analyze Existing Rider Feedback
Check social media feedback, as well as customer service and in-app survey feedback for insights into pain points and concerns.
CAT has a Facebook and Instagram account that is not very active, however there were some good questions that were raised when the app was first released that were important to keep in mind throughout the test. The in-app survey feedback also had some thoughtful comments for the study.
4. Write Field Interview Script and Design Paper Surveys
Questions were chosen to get an idea of barriers for non-app users and pain points and satisfaction for app users. The questions were the same for in-person interviews and paper surveys.
A filtering question was asked first, “Do you use the phone app to buy your bus ticket?”
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Based on answers, non-app users were asked two questions:
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Does the phone app sound like something you would like to use? Why or why not?
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Is there anything that would prevent you from using the phone app?
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For app users, there were three questions:
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How disappointed would you be if you could no longer use the phone app?
(Not at all Disappointed, Somewhat Disappointed, Very Disappointed)-
Please explain why you answered that way.
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If you had a magic wand, what would you change about the phone app?
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How satisfied are you with the phone app?
(Unsatisfied, Kind of Unsatisfied, Neutral, Kind of Satisfied, Satisfied)-
Please explain why you answered that way.
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Paper Surveys in English (left) and Spanish (right)
5. Observe riders, Conduct Interviews, Administer Paper Surveys
Observations were performed of riders purchasing tickets and using different fare payment methods onboard. Paper surveys were handed out onboard and collected soon after. Interviews were performed at the Government transfer station and onboard various routes.
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Observations were made of riders purchasing tickets from the customer service desk and onboard buses. As well as using existing ticketing methods such as cash, pass cards and the rideCAT mobile app.
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Paper surveys in English and Spanish were distributed on busy routes to get as much data as possible.
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Field interviews were performed at the Government Transfer Station and on various routes.
26 App Users
(20 in-person interviews,
6 paper surveys)
56 Non-App Users
(18 in-person interviews,
38 paper surveys)
16 Bus Drivers
across various routes
and times6. Synthesize data, compile a report and presentation
A report was presented to stakeholders of findings from the study and recommendations on how to address issues.
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Gauge user satisfaction and uncover pain points of app users. Users were generally satisfied with the rideCAT app. They said that it was easy and convenient to use, however there were pain points. App users pain points can be broken down into 2 categories, User Experience and Technical. There is some overlap between the categories when it comes to getting real-time service alerts and accurate route times.They described this as a priority and wish that this information and the fare app was combined into a single app.
I prefer a physical card because I’m afraid of online scams
Nothing keeping me from using it, except would want to be able to put a few dollars in and not a whole $20.
The money doesn’t go in the farebox all of the time, and [I] hate to hold up the line of people waiting to board the bus.
When the farebox gets jammed, it’s not safe...especially in Immokalee, there is no supervisor out there to fix it, so you end up holding cash the whole time—it’s not safe!
Other user experience issues were not critical to the function of the app, such as a request for fewer screens to click through to get to the ticket, or having a longer window of time to purchase a single fare ticket. CAT will have to coordinate with Masabi to implement feature upgrades.
Technical problems were the bulk of pain points for app users. Riders mentioned the app freezing when they are trying to use it, or the validator not scanning. One rider mentioned having to restart the app after it glitched when he moved between apps on his phone. And as I mentioned before, service alerts were not updating, which caused a lot of frustration for app users.
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Discover barriers for riders not currently using the app.
For Non-App users some of the obstacles were a lack of awareness of the app and assumptions about the specifics of the app. Some people I talked to didn’t know if they could use special fare passes on the app, like reduced fare tickets or if they could buy single fares.
Circumstantial barriers like not having a bank account or credit or debit cards can keep people from using the app. Insufficient devices such as using a non-smartphone, or currently using a smartphone that doesn’t support new apps, or a phone that doesn’t have enough memory or battery life present obstacles to app usage.
Behaviors and beliefs include riders who don’t use a cellphone at all, or who don’t use the bus often, and riders who are distrustful of digital devices for fear of scams, or they just prefer physical cards.
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Assess how the app is performing in relation to stakeholders goals. All 16 drivers I spoke with liked the app. They said riders rarely had any issues and never asked for help. Compared to the farebox, where the driver has to intervene often when cash gets jammed and paper tickets won’t swipe. All of the operators were frustrated with these farebox malfunctions and some expressed that it put them in unsafe positions, one example being holding cash on their route. They also mentioned that it took up time from their route to troubleshoot those issues.
Drivers said that they didn’t know much about the app and when some non-app riders asked them about it, all they could do was direct them to the app store. They had no information to share with riders.
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