iOS Mobile App Design

DVLP app

DVLP is a basketball training app that offers personalized skill development for young athletes. We evaluated and redesigned the app to enhance user experience and better support player growth.

UX Designer • UI Designer • Researcher

3 weeks

Pema, Nick and Joshua

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Context: Understanding the client

Imagine you're a young athlete, stepping into a gym with big dreams but no coach to guide you. DVLP was built to fill that gap: a mobile basketball training platform designed to bring elite-level coaching to any athlete, anywhere, regardless of background. After a quick skill assessment, users receive customized training plans tailored to their goals, skill levels, and positions, making professional training more accessible.

Led by Coach Chevelle Saunsoci, a WNBA coach and youth development advocate. DVLP’s mission is clear: empower young athletes to level up daily, building habits of self-discipline, confidence, and skill.

Project Overview

The project involved developing an innovative app for young athletes. However with early feedback revealed critical gaps: onboarding friction, engagement drop-offs, paywall barriers, and missed opportunities to build stickiness and emotional connection with users. Therefore, after reviewing the app, my team and I saw an opportunity to redesign the user experience and align it with the client's vision. With just three weeks to prove its value, we prioritized a smooth onboarding process, reducing friction at critical drop-off points and an emotional design to boost motivation.

Problem

Despite strong early interest, with over 150 downloads and a growing email list. DVLP faced significant drop-offs after users completed the initial quiz.

Users were excited to assess their skills, but many abandoned the app before experiencing the real value.
The core issues were uncovered:

Despite strong early interest, with over 150 downloads and a growing email list. DVLP faced significant drop-offs after users completed the initial quiz.

Users were excited to assess their skills, but many abandoned the app before experiencing the real value.
The core issues were uncovered:

Friction at the paywall: Requiring a credit card for a free trial deterred many young users and their parents.

Unclear onboarding flow: Users weren’t fully understanding what DVLP offered before hitting a commitment point.

Low early engagement: Beyond the initial quiz, there were few strong incentives to keep coming back daily.

Challenge

The challenge wasn’t just about fixing a broken flow, it was about rekindling the emotional spark that brought young athletes to DVLP in the first place.

We needed to:

The challenge wasn’t just about fixing a broken flow, it was about rekindling the emotional spark that brought young athletes to DVLP in the first place.

We needed to:

Smooth the onboarding experience so users could immediately see the value of committing to daily training.

Reduce friction at critical drop-off points like the paywall, while still supporting sustainable monetization.

Enhance gamification and feedback loops to turn training into a journey of milestones, achievements, and social pride.

Additionally, we needed to:

Align with stakeholder vision by treating the app as a real, organic, and raw training experience.

Work within a timeline that called for a handoff of the app redesign after a three-week design sprint.

Solution

I redesigned the Knobs online store with a focus on clarity, identity, and flow. By conducting user interviews, a card sorting exercise, and building out a full task flow around a real user persona, I restructured the site’s information architecture, introduced a new visual identity, and built a high-fidelity prototype. The result is a shopping experience that’s bold yet intuitive, empowering users to explore, filter, and shop confidently—just like they would in-store.

View Prototype

View Figma File

Design Process and Strategy

Following the client brief, our team mapped out a strategic plan for the 3-week sprint, outlining five key steps to guide the DVLP app redesign. Grounded in user research, we identified core pain points, then progressed through sketching and ideation to explore solutions. These ideas were tested, refined, and iterated to ensure the final design offered meaningful improvements over the original.

Evaluating the Current App

Since I had prior experience evaluating websites, I took the initiative to conduct a detailed heuristic evaluation based on Nielsen and Norman Group’s 10 Usability Heuristics. I wanted to deliver clear explanations for each principle and suggest best practices to both my team and the client.

I loved this part of the process, it helped me apply theoretical principles to a real product and make actionable recommendations.

Here’s a breakdown of key heuristic issues I identified:

I loved this part of the process, it helped me apply theoretical principles to a real product and make actionable recommendations.

Here’s a breakdown of key heuristic issues I identified:

This heuristic evaluation helped me describe specific usability problems, which ultimately guided our design decisions. If you can clearly describe the problem, you're already halfway to solving it.

View Heuristic Evaluation

Finding inspirations among Competitors

We applied the plus/delta method to extract strengths and weaknesses from competitors. Our client initially mentioned HomeCourt and Ballogy, but was also interested in gamification inspiration, leading me to propose analyzing Duolingo.

As a result, our competitive analysis shaped a hybrid approach: combining HomeCourt’s athletic credibility, Ballogy’s progress tracking, and Duolingo’s addictive engagement mechanics. Our goal was to create an app that was personalized, motivating, and intuitive.

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