Helping coaches to create programs 56% faster & be aware of the athletes
O2X is a human performance company that helps tactical teams and first responders build physical, mental, and emotional strength through training in nutrition, sleep, stress management, injury prevention, and mental health.
Problem
O2X coaches needed a better internal platform to quickly and efficiently create and edit new programs for their athletes without unnecessary complications. They also required easy access to information about the organizations they train and complete athlete data, including injuries, assessments, and program or workout progress and completion.
Link to O2X
Timeline
3 months for design
+6 months for dev
Services
Strategy
UX Research
Visual Design
User testing
Team
2 Stakeholders
1 Project Manager
2 Designers
4 Developers
7 Coaches(users)
Role
Sr. Product Designer
Goals
As a team, we defined clear goals focused on enhancing usability, increasing product value, and aligning with business objectives.
Improve and simplify the creation and editing of programs
Better program content with useful information for coaches & athletes
Redesign the web app’s outdated UI
Improve workout and exercises database
Improved navigation and overall content
Create a dashboard for better management of organizations and athletes
Outcome
Creating programs more efficiently, assigning them to athletes, improving the management of organizations and athletes under the coaches' supervision, and implementing a better information architecture led to significant improvements in the web app.
56%
Faster program creation
Duplication of days, assign program and better day creation lead to create programs in a few hours intead of 2 days on average.
+71%
Coach awareness and engagement
Coaches now report feeling more connected and informed about their athletes' progress, injuries, and evaluations, thanks to the new performance dashboard.
Product strategy and discovery
This initial stage in the human-centered process was essential to lay the groundwork for a successful design project. We've focused on understanding users, identifying key problems, and creating a shared vision for the project.
The Coach's Platform Journey
We've created a clear visual representation of the coach’s experience, emphasizing key touchpoints and interactions with the product. To gather accurate information, we held insightful discussions and workshops with O2X coaches and nutritionists, who shared their valuable experiences with us.
Workshop with stakeholders and coaches to define the coach journey
UX audit for the old UI
We talked with coaches and created a journey map to better understand the platform’s flows, functionalities and actions. We also conducted a UX audit of the web app to identify errors, evaluate its functions, and improve the platform.
Insights from the audit
The UI felt outdated and resembled legacy software.
Program management and creation were separated into different sections, forcing users to switch back and forth between pages to create, view, and assign programs.
Building a program from scratch was time-consuming, taking hours or even days to configure an ideal setup.
There was no option to duplicate days or weeks, and every element had to be added step by step.
The dashboard mainly showed a feed and recent activity for athletes, but offered little functional value.
Home stats were not meaningful; coaches wanted more insights into their athletes and organizations.
The exercise library was cluttered with duplicate or similar entries, making it unclear which version was the correct or most up-to-date one.
Analyzing competitors
To better understand the market, we researched into competitors and conducted a thorough comparison between them and the old product. Concentrating specifically on the user experience of program creation, We interacted with the actual tools, enhancing our understanding of the competitive landscape. While this product was an internal tool for O2X coaches and not a commercial product we found really interesting thing that we can get some inspiration to create a better product for coaches.
What Others Did Right: Learning from the Competition
Streamlined program creation with a full calendar view
Clear and organized structure for building programs, exercises, and workouts
All program management, creation, and sharing tools in one unified space
Helpful walkthrough to guide users through the product
Editing programs now takes only a few steps and minimal time
Clean, simple, and intuitive interface design
Working on a better navigation and clear structure
We revamped content organization and navigation to make the platform more user-friendly and aligned with insights from our research.
We combined the Library and Program Creation into a single unified page, allowing coaches to create, view, edit, duplicate, and assign programs all in one place without needing to switch between pages or sections to perform related tasks.
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The Coach's Platform Journey
Through our research, we identified several key pain points and insights that help inform the design and overall experience of the current O2X portal. Below are the main pain points experienced by coaches.
Defining possible Features & functions
We held a workshop where we analyzed the coaches’ pain points. Based on the initial meeting, where stakeholders mentioned some desired features and functionalities, we worked together with the coaches to explore potential solutions to improve the product and overall experience.
Full calendar view for the program creation
New dashboard with organization and athlete data metrics
Create presets or templates of program categories, days and weeks
PDF, image, excel export tool of exercises
Track and input athlete exercises
Autosaving feature when creating a program
A better search and filtering for the library of programs
Duplicate an existing program, delete my programs(program still live in the database)
Preview of existing programs
Assignation of programs in the library and programs
Prioritizing ideas and functionalities
After the workshop on the insights, we ended up with dozens of ideas, features, and functionalities. However, we knew it would be impossible to implement them all due to time or resource constraints, so together as a team we prioritized features by considering effort and importance, taking into account business objectives, user goals, user needs, and the engineering perspective.
Main core pages (dashboard, programs and program creation)
Secondary pages (chat, assessments and feed)
Starting the ideation and design process
We started by generating ideas using How Might We (HMW) questions, exploring different concepts based on the research, insights, and feature prioritization. After voting on the best ideas, we moved on to creating sketches and wireframes for the main screens such as the dashboard, programs, and program creation.
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Sketching ideas and turn them into functional wireframes
With some ideas defined in mind but not yet on paper, I took the opportunity to create sketches to structure the sections, organize content, and begin placing key functions within the main screens. From there, I developed wireframes for core pages focused on a clear layout and essential user actions.
Designing the dashboard
All the information for organizations and athletes is centralized here, from the number of athletes, programs, and assessments within an organization to key athlete data such as injuries, completed programs, passed or failed assessments, and more.
Designing Library and programs pages
In the program library, coaches can view important information such as the type and description of each program, as well as perform key actions. From here, they can access the library of programs, exercises, and workouts, in addition to creating new ones and filtering through a wide range of options. This makes finding programs easy, accessible, and intuitive.
Creating Programs pages
One of the main changes was adding a full calendar view with the ability to add weeks and copy days to speed up program creation. We also made it faster, simpler and more intuitive to add steps, exercises, and repetitions using keyboard shortcuts.
Secondary pages
Then we created the events, chat, feed, assessments, and settings pages for the coaches. For these pages, we changed the structure a bit, and we only made a few layout adjustments and applied the O2X brand styles to maintain consistency.
Feed and calendar of activities
Full calendar view
Coach chat with athletes
Personal info updates
Giving life to designs and testing them
After applying the new design to the screens and receiving approval, we moved on to creating a testing plan in Notion to define testing plan, tasks, scenarios, and prototype the flows in Figma.
For testing with coaches (our users), we used Maze, which allowed us to conduct the test remotely and unmoderated. Maze also provided features that helped us examine the results in greater detail, offering both quantitative and qualitative insights.
Testing plan & information in Notion
Test setup for tasks, questions and user scenarios
Creating the maze testing set up with tasks and questions
Prototyping in action
Testing report and insights
Despues del workshop sobre los insights nos quedamos con decenas de ideas, features y funcionalidades, pero sabiamos que iba a ser imposible crearlas todas ya se por tiempo o recursos asi que together as a team, we prioritized features by considering effort and importance, taking into account business objectives, user goals, user needs, and the engineering perspective.
Coaches taking Maze testing
Results from Maze task
Tasks path analysis in Maze
Multiple choice questions
Results from Maze task
Positive insights
Overall, most of the feedback was positive. The full calendar was something that really excited the coaches, and both the organization of the exercises and the program filters, as well as the dashboard, were well received by the entire O2X team.
UI is great and friendly
Duplicate a day or program is fantastic
Filtering options is a quick saver
Easy to find exercises
Way easier to create programs and assign them
Having athlete info is useful
Custom typing for sets, reps, and rest is easy and intuitive
Neutral & constructive insights
There were only a few small observations, such as some confusion with certain terms, the suggestion to add groups or categories to the exercises, and possibly optimizing the space in the full calendar and adding options when duplicating a day in the programs.
Coaches want to see filter options for "Injury" or "rehab"
Add injury tag to an athlete would be nice
Find a plan is a bit confusing
Larger preview of exercises
Provide clear categorization of exercises
Select multiple days or weeks for copying
Next steps
After the testing report, I focused on quick UI improvements. While front-end development continued, I supported the dev team with handoff, helped with implementation, and built a scalable Design System to keep the app consistent over time.
A few months after launching the new version, we received feedback and metrics from both stakeholders and coaches. The new UI and overall experience received over 80% approval from coaches. They mentioned they can now create and duplicate programs much faster, reporting they now build programs in hours instead of days. They also feel more connected to their athletes and are better able to track progress and performance through the improved dashboard.
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