PlayVS
The Setup
PlayVS runs on coaches. They get teams to their matches, manage rosters across multiple teams, and keep students showing up week to week. Match day was the part that kept falling apart. Check-in lived in one place, coordination happened over Discord and email, and score reporting was a separate manual flow with no validation. If any one of those steps broke, the match didn't happen. Forfeit rates were over 50%, so this was a real problem.
Overview
Project Type:Core UX Scaling & Mobile Optimization
My Role: Lead Product Designer – UI, UX, IA
Platform: Responsive Web & Mobile
Timeline: 1 Year (Spring 2022 – Fall 2023)
Team: PM, 3 Engineers, Sponsors & Publisher Partners
Outcome: Redesigned the match day experience, reducing forfeits by 74% (50% → 13%) and improving check-in completion from 62% to 97%.
The Problem
This wasn't a single broken feature — it was a broken sequence. Pre-match, coaches had no clear confirmation that their team was actually checked in. During the match, there was no in-platform way to reach the opposing coach. Post-match, score disputes required CS intervention because either team could submit whatever they wanted. Three separate failure points, each one capable of killing a match on its own.
The deeper issue: coaches were doing the platform's job for it, using external tools to fill gaps PlayVS should have owned.
The Decisions
We ran research with over 100 coaches through post-match surveys and weekly sessions. We went in assuming they wanted us to automate match day for them. In the sessions, they kept asking for more control instead, and clearer confirmation that things were actually done. That shaped every decision after it.
Instead of scattering fixes across the app, I put all three in the Match Lobby, where coaches already spent their time. Each one solved a specific problem coaches had raised.
Ready Up replaced the old check-in flow with a single tap. It stays visible above the fold and shows progress across every team, so coaches finally knew when they were done.
In-App Chat brought opponent coordination into the platform. We kept it simple with text only, no files or video, built on the Discord and Twitch patterns coaches already knew. Role labels for Coach and Player solved the "who do I even talk to" problem.
Match Assistant replaced freeform score entry with a guided, step-by-step flow. Both teams had to validate the result before it could be submitted. Once they had to agree, disputes dropped right away.
We rolled it out in stages: Chat and a basic Scoreboard in Spring, then the full Match Assistant with cross-team validation in Fall. That way coaches could adapt without feeling like everything changed at once.
The Results
The redesign cut forfeits by 74%, dropped support tickets by 36%, and raised check-in completion from 62% to 97%. Future iterations will refine team role management and automation to further improve the experience.
