About MLS

As one of the top professional sports leagues in North America, Major League Soccer features 27 unique and distinct clubs, all captivating fans both inside and outside the stadium walls.

My Role

Lead Product Designer—discovery and product thinking, all the way to high-fidelity designs and specs. I worked with the Director of Product Design, Product Managers, a Technical Product Manager, and 10+ Engineers.

Launched

May 2018
iOS, Android

Fans fall in love with their favorite club, not the league, so they look for where they can immerse themselves the most. The MLS app’s point of view had always been league-focused, so the spirit of this re-design was to shift the paradigm so that clubs could be in the spotlight. Our goal was to create a deeper and more personalized experience so that fans could always have access to what they cared about.

Problem

Through research and insights, we discovered that many people were using club-specific apps in favor of the MLS league app. It became clear that we weren’t delivering enough club-focused content, which is what our fans were craving the most. The existing app was outdated and unreliable too, so it was also in need of user experience improvements. On the business side, we aimed to increase app downloads and engagement numbers while balancing these fan needs.

Some Key Challenges

No design system: Establishing the design without a design system was one of our biggest upfront challenges. We took this as a huge opportunity to not only make a big impact on the app re-design, but to set the groundwork for all our digital products moving forward. See more on the MLS Design System.

Technical constraints: The engineering team was building front and back-end technologies in parallel to our design efforts to help support our new and more reliable product. We had to coordinate and troubleshoot with them regularly to create viable solutions.

Evoking emotion: Not all fans can attend live games, but they’re still excited and emotionally invested. We had to find ways to promote those feelings on a digital platform so fans could authentically connect.

Sticking to our audience: We took pre-existing soccer data and conducted research of our own to narrow down our target audience. We had to keep our solutions focused to ensure we were serving our primary fan base.

Impact

The MLS App, Reimagined

Bringing club representation forward and being loud and bold, the new MLS app re-design was the change the league needed to reach fans with purpose. We put simplicity and performance first and facilitated meaningful connections to the games, and to the clubs.

From core content screens to utility screens, the design was simple and repeatable so it was intuitive and light weight for our fan’s daily engagement. It enhanced overall consistency, as well as design and development velocity. Communicating within our team was essential in the success of this project. I wrote more about that here.

Opportunities for fans to tailor a personalized experience went far beyond onboarding. We designed several access points to help fans manage their followed topics, set notifications, discover new content, and adjust scores preferences so they could get exactly what they wanted.