Abstract

Creating a tournment scheduling solution for a leading pickeball orgnization (and beyond)

About the project

The problem

By 2023 pickleball had become an undeniable force in recreational sports. Universal Tennis was looking for ways to expand its userbase and pickleball seemed like a perfect next evolution of the rating system and platform.

Partnerships were reached with the Association of Pickleball Players (APP), one of the largest pickleball organizations in the United States. However, in order for them to fully adopt the platform, they needed robust tournament scheduling tools in order to run their hundreds of players events.

The solution

A new visually-engaging and easy-to-use scheduling platform that would accommodate traditional match schedulilng as well as just-in-time match updates, adding tens of thousands of players to the UTR platform.

Understanding problems and pain points.

Progress had been slow, with mixed . Head of product and I flew out to Chicago for two days of workshops focusing on APPs needs and wants and then prioritizing them according to immediate needs vs long-term desires.

Planning and concepting.

The original platform in use used a series of fields and dropdowns to manage. It ws like using a Unix text-based entry system to schedule vs a modern graphical interface.

As we worked through the project, we also realized that there were different stages that needed to be accounted for: planning, check-in, and day-of event management.

Setting up the Event desk (which is what we came to call it) had its own set of challenges, as we had to account for different scoring formats and game types in order to be able to accurately report back to the main platform and to the players at each tournament.