Mobile Games for Training Team Sports IQ & Sports ERP System for Clubs
Ice Hockey Training App & ERP System
ROLE: Digital product designer (ux/ui), graphic designer, branding, visual communication
TOOLS: Paper & pencil, Miro, Midjourney, Adobe Illustrator, Figma
DURATION: 4 months (currently on hold)
Training tomorrow's team players to see beyond the ball.
This case study follows the parallel development of two interconnected products born from a single vision. When a former colleague and his friend from a sports club approached me, they presented an exciting dual challenge: creating a comprehensive yet easy-to-use ERP system for club management, while simultaneously developing an educational gaming platform to nurture young athletes' spatial awareness and sports intelligence.
The ERP system would streamline club administration, planning trainings and performance tracking, while the mobile games would help their youngest team members develop crucial game awareness and decision-making skills. These products, while distinct—with the games' planned availability both through app stores and via the ERP platform for club members—share a common goal of elevating team sports through smarter tools and training.
The Problem
Running a professional sports club is like conducting a complex orchestra—keeping track of multiple teams, age groups, events, and player data and statistics can quickly become overwhelming. While trainers juggle daily practices, matches, and player development, they need a tool that's as mobile and dynamic as they are.
Current solutions don't address the reality of a trainer's hectic schedule. They need something that fits in their pocket, allowing them to efficiently: record training sessions on the go, plan upcoming practices, track player statistics and development, manage membership details, organise club events, etc.
Despite the clear need for such a mobile-first solution, the market lacks tools that truly understand and support the fast-paced lifestyle of sports club trainers.
Beyond Management: Developing Young Athletes Young athletes often struggle with court vision and spatial awareness in team sports. While these skills are fundamental to becoming a strong team player, they're difficult to develop through traditional training alone. We also noticed that many young team members of the club spent their downtime—whether traveling to matches or relaxing at training camps or being at home—playing mobile games that offered little educational value. While sports-themed games exist in the market, they focus primarily on entertainment rather than skill development. There's a clear gap in the market for games that systematically develop crucial abilities like: quick situation assessment, strategic decision-making, team play coordination and spatial awareness.
The market lacks thoughtfully designed training tools that can transform idle screen time into valuable skill development for young athletes.
The Solution
Smart Club Management We envisioned a comprehensive mobile solution that puts the power of club management in every trainer's pocket. The app streamlines essential tasks including: (1) team organisation and scheduling, (2) training plan creation and management, (3) individual player tracking and statistics, (4) match planning and performance analysis, (5) event coordination and communication, (6) membership fee payment.
What makes this solution unique is its ability to serve the entire club ecosystem. Beyond coaches, it connects parents, athletes, club directors, and other stakeholders through a single, intuitive platform.
Intelligent Athlete Development Parallel to the management system, we created an educational gaming platform designed to transform young athletes' understanding of team play. As a start we focused on ice-hockey from all the team sports. Through a series of situations carefully crafted by ice-hockey experts, players develop crucial skills: (1) court vision and spatial awareness, (2) quick decision-making abilities, (3) strategic team play thinking, (4) game situation analysis.
What sets these games apart is their educational progression—from basic concepts to complex game scenarios—and their innovative replay feature. Players can analyse their decisions, explore alternative strategies, and understand the 'why' behind better plays, turning gaming time into valuable learning opportunities for the young athletes.
A practice scenario from the app.
The Process
Step 1 Discovery & research
When I joined the project, the team had already outlined basic functionalities and sketched the ERP system's architecture. As a former basketball player who competed at a relatively high level, I had some insight into how sports clubs operate, understood team dynamics, and was familiar with the challenges young players face with court vision. However, I needed to bridge some important knowledge gaps to create effective solutions.
1. Understanding the Sport My discovery process involved immersing myself in the world of ice hockey. I needed to learn everything from the sport's specific terminology and rules to the unique equipment requirements and player movements. Understanding coaching methodologies and training approaches became crucial, as was studying how sports clubs operate behind the scenes. Perhaps most importantly, I needed to analyse how coaches manage their daily workflows and challenges, as they would be the primary users of our management system.
2. Digital Sports Analysis I conducted extensive research into existing digital sports games, examining every aspect of their design. This included studying user interface designs and controls, analysing game flow and progression patterns, evaluating visual elements and camera perspectives, and understanding character design and movement. Each element provided valuable insights into creating an engaging and effective user experience.
3. Stakeholder Insights Regular workshops and discussions with team members proved invaluable. Their perspectives as both senior sports professionals and parents of young players provided crucial insights into current club management practices and daily coaching responsibilities. They helped me understand the administrative pain points and youth development needs from multiple angles.
This comprehensive research phase gave me the foundation needed to move confidently into ideation, ensuring my suggestions and our solutions would address real needs while remaining practical and implementable.
Step 2 Ideation
- Mapping Ambitions to Reality -
Our brainstorming sessions transformed research insights into actionable plans. Working with our findings and initial requirements, we established clear benchmarks for branding and visual direction that would unite both products while serving their distinct purposes.
To ensure we were designing for real needs, we developed detailed user personas representing our diverse audience—from busy coaches to young athletes. This foundation helped us create a comprehensive feature list for both the ERP system and the sports IQ games app, though we quickly realised we needed to carefully scope our initial development phases.
The ERP system emerged as a complex endeavour, requiring thoughtful prioritisation to maintain manageability while delivering value. Similarly, our sports IQ games platform inspired ambitious visions—we imagined creating specialised versions for different team sports, age groups, and skill levels, with engaging features that would make it the go-to choice for young athletes.
Perhaps the most challenging aspect of this phase was making pragmatic decisions about our MVP features. While we had generated exciting ideas for both products, we needed to balance innovation with reality—considering budget constraints and timelines. This meant temporarily setting aside some compelling features to focus on core functionality that would provide immediate value to our users.
Coach's user persona for the sports club ERP app
Young athlete's user persona for the sports IQ app
Step 3 Design
- From Complex Systems to Playful Interactions -
ERP System: Building a Solid Foundation Before diving into design, I thoroughly analysed the team's initial sketches, making detailed notes and identifying potential questions. Given the system's complexity, precision was crucial—we couldn't risk discovering logical flaws or missing features late in development that might compromise the system's extensibility or usefulness.
I collaborated closely with the original concept creators, ensuring every question was answered and every detail understood. This groundwork allowed me to reimagine the architecture with improved UX solutions and intuitive categorisation. A key priority was minimising clicks for our time-pressed trainer users, making essential functions easily accessible.
After refining the structure, I reconvened with stakeholders to validate that the revised architecture met all requirements while maintaining clarity and usability.
Screen Architecture: Coaches & Management Flow
One of several user journey maps created for the platform, showing the detailed navigation path for coaches and management users.
Sports IQ Games: Creating an Engaging Experience Working in parallel on the games platform, I began by establishing the visual foundation. This included developing mood boards, selecting colour palettes, and exploring inspiration for backgrounds and characters. The visual language needed to be both appealing and functional, from typography choices to UI element shapes.
Collaboration was key in bringing the games to life. Working with our animation artist, Vera, we planned player movements and game control behaviors in detail. I designed multiple character variations—male and female players, plus goalies—while ensuring our development team could easily customize and animate them within the system we created.
This dual-track design process required careful balance, ensuring both products maintained their distinct purposes while sharing a cohesive quality standard.
Game Design Philosophy The sports IQ app approaches skill development through realistic hockey court scenarios. Rather than traditional right-or-wrong gameplay, players explore various tactical possibilities in both offensive and defensive situations. Each scenario offers multiple valid solutions, encouraging players to discover that some approaches might be more effective than others—just like in real gameplay.
This nuanced approach to decision-making reflects the complexity of actual team sports, where success often depends on choosing the best option among several possibilities rather than finding a single "correct" answer.
User-Centered Character Design Before proceeding with the game environment, we validated our character designs through multiple feedback channels. The young hockey players at the club provided invaluable user perspective, while game development experts and our animation artist offered technical insights. After gathering and incorporating this feedback, I refined the characters until they received unanimous approval.
Character Types: Players & Goalie
The game features three base character models—female player, male player, and goalie—with customizable jerseys, helmets, and numbers for team creation. Future versions will include an advanced avatar system allowing players to customize facial features, skin tones, hairstyles, and eye colors for more personalized characters.
Full turnaround views of each character type
designed with intentionally limited facial variations for our MVP phase. This lean approach allows us to validate market fit before investing in extensive character customisation. More diverse character designs are planned for future development phases.
Only after getting the unanimous approval did I move forward with designing the ice rink, the hockey court—the stage for our educational games—and the app's supporting screens. This systematic approach ensured that every element, from characters to playing environment, would resonate with our young athletes while supporting our educational goals.
The ice rink that serves as the background of the different game scenarios.
In the testing phase we only go for half court.
Starting screen of the basic MVP after the splash animation.
Selected status of Training Scenario and Team options.
Dialog box example.
Choosing new training scenario in the basic MVP.
Some test animations for character movements.
Gameplay Mechanics Unlike traditional sports games that focus on continuous action, our educational approach uses a more deliberate, strategic style of play. Drawing inspiration from games like Angry Birds, players control their shots using an intuitive single-finger mechanic to determine both direction and power.
Players take their time to analyse each scenario, with the game pausing for decision-making moments. The active player is clearly indicated by a green dot above their character, and users can switch between different players on their team. Movement is straightforward—simply tap where you want a character to move. For shooting the puck, players drag their finger across the screen—the direction of dots indicates the shot's path, while the distance of the drag determines its power. Once the player releases their finger, the scenario unfolds, with all characters moving in response to the player's decision.
This thoughtful, measured approach allows young athletes to focus on strategic thinking and spatial awareness rather than quick reflexes, making it an effective training tool for developing game intelligence.
A Practice Scenario Mockup
Users control their shots using an intuitive single-finger mechanic to determine both direction and power. Users take their time to analyze each scenario, with the game pausing for decision-making moments. The active player is controlled by pulling them backward—as you aim with the dotted guide lines, the character automatically rotates to face the intended direction. All players maintain subtle idle animations until a shot is taken, at which point the scenario plays out based on the chosen action.
The Team Sports IQ App's Style Guide
Next steps
- From Design to Development -
The project has reached a significant milestone, with all initial designs and animations now in the hands of our development team. I've completed the app screen designs while Vera has created all character animations for our first three game scenarios, setting the foundation for our training platform
Our next phase is crucial: once development of these initial scenarios is complete, we'll conduct comprehensive testing with at least 300 young athletes from our target audience. This testing will evaluate: (1) game design effectiveness, (2) user experience and controls, (3) overall flow and engagement, (4) educational impact.
The insights gained from this substantial user testing will inform our iteration process before we expand the platform with additional scenarios and features. This methodical approach ensures we're building not just an engaging game, but an effective training tool that truly serves young athletes' needs.