Start with place
A map and useful filters make nearby courts the fastest entry point. Court details then answer the questions that determine whether someone will actually go.
01 / Product Design
COURTSIDE
A pickup basketball platform designed around how players find courts, organize games and get on the floor.
Product design / UX / UI2025
Overview
Pickup basketball is simple to play and surprisingly difficult to organize. Useful information about courts, availability and active games is often scattered, incomplete or missing.
- Timeline
- March to July 2025
- Role
- Research, product strategy, UX, UI and prototype
- Collaborators
- Independent graduate project
- Audience
- Pickup basketball players looking for a court or a game
What the work needed to do
COURTSIDE brings court discovery, game creation and player coordination into one focused mobile experience built around the moment someone decides they want to play.
The choices that shaped the final direction.
Separate finding from hosting
Players can join an existing game quickly, while a guided creation flow gives hosts enough control without turning a casual run into administration.
Keep the system familiar
Saved courts and clear game states reduce repeated searching while keeping the experience legible to someone opening it for the first time.
Process / Evidence
01Research
From a broad interest to a specific friction.
The project began with pickup basketball culture, then narrowed to the repeated gap between wanting to play and knowing where, when and with whom.
02Structure
Four actions shaped the product.
Find a court. Find a game. Create a game. Return to saved places. That structure kept the product focused as screens and flows developed.
03Testing
The story was refined through repeated presentation.
The project was presented throughout the term and again at an industry-facing showcase. Feedback consistently emphasized the clarity of the map and court-detail experience.
Exact contribution
We defined the problem, led the research and product strategy, designed the experience, built the interactive prototype and presented it throughout the graduate term.
The final prototype covered the core discovery, joining, hosting and saved-court flows and was presented at the graduate showcase in August 2025. No commercial performance is claimed; the result is a complete product-design case study.
COURTSIDE demonstrates how a personally relevant subject can become a disciplined product system when the work stays close to a real user decision: how do I get into a game today?