Chicago Blackhawks.
One app for the full picture.
A mobile app prototype giving coaches direct recruitment visibility into athlete performance — communication, workouts and progress tracking in a single connected experience.
The Blackhawks coaching staff needed a centralized tool to manage athlete development. Existing processes were fragmented — workouts assigned through one channel, performance tracked in another, player communication happening separately. The full picture of an athlete’s development existed nowhere in one place.
The brief was to design a prototype that brought it all together: a mobile-first app where coaches could assign workouts, track performance, communicate with players, and monitor progress — all within a single system designed around how coaching staff actually work.
1 system
Communication, workouts, tracking, and recruitment unified in one app
4 flows
Onboarding, training, performance tracking, and coach communication
Prototype
Full interactive prototype built for concept validation — not just wireframes
Validated
Concept direction confirmed — clear product direction for further development
The full picture of an athlete existed nowhere.
Elite athlete development requires constant communication, structured training, and real-time performance visibility. For the Blackhawks coaching staff, all of that was happening across disconnected tools — no single source of truth, no centralized view of an athlete’s development arc.
The brief wasn’t to design screens. It was to design a product concept that could credibly solve this — architecture first, then execution, then a prototype that proved the concept was viable before any engineering investment.
Fragmented toolset
Workouts, performance data, and player communication all lived in separate systems. No unified view of an athlete’s development.
No performance visibility
Coaches lacked direct access to athlete performance data between sessions — progress tracking was manual, inconsistent, and time-delayed.
Communication without context
Player messaging existed outside the context of workouts and performance data — coaches couldn’t respond to what they were seeing in real time.
One app, five connected surfaces
Before any screen was designed, the product architecture was mapped — what the app needed to contain, how the surfaces connected, and how each one served the different roles using it. Five core sections, each with a clear job, all feeding into a unified athlete performance picture.
Designing for the training context
The interface had to work in the training environment — quick to scan, easy to navigate in motion, and designed to keep athletes focused on the workout rather than the screen. Every interaction decision was made with that physical context in mind.
Decisions that shaped the prototype
01
Architecture before screens
The product structure — five surfaces, two roles, shared data — was defined before a single screen was designed. Getting the architecture right meant the prototype could demonstrate a real product concept, not just polished mockups.
02
Designed for the physical context
Athletes use this in a training environment — in motion, between sets, under pressure. Every tap target, navigation decision, and information hierarchy was evaluated against that context, not a comfortable desk setup.
03
Two roles, one data model
Athletes and coaches see the same underlying data from different angles. Designing for both roles in parallel — rather than separately — meant the app architecture was coherent rather than two disconnected experiences bolted together.
04
Brand without distraction
The Blackhawks’ brand is strong — red, black, the logo. The interface uses the brand palette to anchor identity without letting it compete with the data and functionality that coaches and athletes actually need to see.
What it delivered
A credible product concept
A high-fidelity prototype that demonstrated the full product vision — not wireframes, but a working model of how the app would actually behave and feel in use.
Clear product direction
The prototype validated the core concept and gave stakeholders a shared visual language for the product — reducing ambiguity and aligning expectations before any engineering investment.
Interaction model established
Navigation patterns, data hierarchy, and interaction behaviors all defined and prototyped — a foundation for future development teams to build from with confidence.
