Brought in after nearly a year without design leadership, I led UX modernization for the NFHS Network by reviving earlier work, rebuilding the foundational design system, and improving key user flows. My foundation enabled a smooth brand refresh without reworking foundational structure. I partnered with the PM and a junior designer to deliver a vision-led prototype, align cross-platform efforts, and close usability gaps. I collaborated with marketing to ensure brand goals fit product realities. This work drove the platform’s largest UI update in years and led to measurable impact, including a 9.5% lift in conversion and a 6.6% increase in ARPU from a single research-backed UI change.
PlayOn! Sports is a high school sports focused company with products like NFHS (National Federation of High School Sports) Network, GoFan, and MaxPreps. The NFHS Network is a national high school sports streaming platform, offering live and on-demand coverage for families, communities, and fans across the U.S.
When I joined, the platform had no dedicated design leadership for nearly a year. The product experience was fragmented, outdated, and heavily shaped by backend development priorities and immediate feature requests. My initial focus was to stabilize and modernize the UX foundation by auditing systems, aligning teams, and establishing clear design direction that could scale. This work set the stage for brand and marketing teams to later build on the system without requiring rework or structural redesign.
Working with a PM and a junior designer, I led the rework of the design system, directed the componentization of key resuable elements making further tweaks easier across the product, validated junior designer work, and produced a vision prototype to show how these efforts would play out in the product. The prototype included feature explorations tied to engagement drivers identified in earlier research such as community visibility, school loyalty, and ease of navigation across live and past events. I focused on product continuity, modern interaction models, and long-term UX value rather than just surface-level aesthetics. From this, the product team was able to advocate for the largest update to organization (school, team, and sport association) pages and further leverage that learning to a quick turnaround on an app refresh.
Enabled the product’s largest UI update in over a year without foundational system rework. Realized a 9.5% lift in conversion and 6.6% increase in ARPU from a single, research-backed design update. Supported brand and marketing updates through future-ready design groundwork. Resolved all major accesibility issues and increased SEO content on pages for increased product discoverability.
