Overview
LockedIn HQ is the centralized "Operating System" for the athlete economy, designed to unify NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness) opportunities, brand partnerships, and recruitment analytics. As Product Designer and CTO, I took full ownership of the ecosystem transforming a fragmented mobile concept into a comprehensive enterprise platform serving athletes, brands, and agents . My goal was to design a scalable, "logic-driven" infrastructure that makes the athlete market measurable and independent.
Understanding the Problem
The sports technology market suffered from extreme fragmentation, leaving athletes without a centralized business dashboard and recruiters without a reliable source of truth for talent data.
My goal as the Senior Product Designer was to solve this by creating a unified multi-sided marketplace that required a high-utility mobile app for athletes and an enterprise-grade web platform for brands and recruiters .
I was responsible for designing a comprehensive ecosystem that not only facilitated NIL transactions but also included a robust backend "Control Tower" for managing platform governance and financial auditing.
PRD I built in google docs to stay in touch with the stakeholders
Research
I led a deep-dive research phase into the "Athlete Journey" and "Recruiter Workflow" to identify critical friction points, using persona mapping to uncover gaps in athlete financial literacy and recruiter data transparency .
By analyzing the shifting NIL landscape, I designed a user experience that maintains legal and financial compliance across regions while ensuring the platform remains intuitive during rapid scaling.
Through usability testing and behavioral data analysis, I engineered a "Choice Architecture" that simplifies complex financial data into actionable tasks, significantly improving user retention and engagement.
User Personas created in FigJam
Userflow
I designed a synchronized, multi-sided user journey that ensures a seamless "Transaction Bridge" between the athlete’s mobile actions and the recruiter’s data requirements. By mapping the ecosystem's logic, I designed a flow where an athlete's contract signature on mobile instantly triggers a verification event in the Admin System and updates the Recruiter's ROI dashboard in real-time.
The flow prioritizes "Speed to Transaction" for the athlete while maintaining strict "Governance and Auditing" for the enterprise user, ensuring that complex NIL data remains both actionable and legally compliant. This approach directly addresses the need for platform ownership, showing I can manage the strategy of how data moves from a community interaction to a final financial settlement.
Userflow in FigJam
Wireframing: The Platform Blueprint
I translated the complex multi-sided user flows into low-fidelity blueprints to establish a clear information hierarchy for both the athlete’s mobile experience and the recruiter’s enterprise dashboard.
This phase allowed me to iterate rapidly on the "Control Tower" logic, ensuring that high-density data remained scannable and that the athlete’s "Choice Architecture" was simple enough for a high-pressure environment.
By focusing on structural layout over aesthetics, I was able to validate that the cross-platform sync between mobile actions and desktop analytics was technically feasible before moving into high-fidelity design.
Few screens wireframes from the mobile app ui and also from the admin section of the web app
High-Fidelity Design & Scalability
I transitioned the validated wireframes into a high-fidelity, cross-platform system designed to balance the high-energy environment of an athlete with the precision required by a brand agent. By architecting a "Control Tower" dashboard, I enabled recruiters to manage over $124.5K in revenue and 1,300+ active users through a single, scannable interface that prioritizes system alerts and pending verifications.
The visual strategy utilizes a high-contrast dark mode to reduce cognitive load, paired with "Actionable Neon" accents to guide athletes through complex NIL legal workshops and event applications.
This modular component library ensures that whether a user is viewing "Athletic Stats" on a mobile device or analyzing "User Role Distribution" on a desktop, the experience remains consistent, scalable, and technically sound.
LockedInHQ App Profile screen , Opportunity details screen and admin dashboard UI
Design System
I engineered a modular design system that serves as the "source of truth" for the entire LockedIn HQ ecosystem, ensuring seamless parity between the athlete’s mobile experience and the recruiter’s enterprise dashboard. By defining a strict hierarchy of Design Tokens and Reusable Components, I reduced the development handoff time and ensured the platform remained technically viable during rapid scaling to over 1,300+ active users.
Typography & Governance
The typography system is the foundational architecture of the interface. I utilized Inter for its neutral, tall x-height, which ensures that complex contract terms and financial metrics remain readable across all device types and lighting conditions.
Functional Hierarchy: Display styles are reserved strictly for high-level data entry points and primary KPIs, creating an "Information Anchor" for the user.
Accessibility Standards: Base body text is set to 16px with a 1.5x line-height ratio to reduce cognitive load during the review of legal workshops and contract fine print.
Systemic Spacing: We implement a 4px-base spacing scale to maintain a strict vertical rhythm, ensuring UI components like NIL Opportunity Cards remain structurally sound as the platform scales.
Visual Language & Logic
The system prioritizes Atomic Design principles, where individual elements are shared across platforms but adapted for their specific environment high-contrast and large-tap targets for mobile, and data-dense, compact layouts for the Admin "Control Tower".
Performance-Driven Color: The palette uses "Actionable Neon" for success states and "Governance Purple" for system logic, creating a consistent behavioral language.
Data Density Management: I designed a flexible grid that supports the high-density metrics required for the $124.5K revenue dashboard while maintaining readability on smaller athlete devices.
The comprehensive design system for the whole platform
Prototyping and Testing
I designed an interactive, high-fidelity prototype in Figma to simulate the end-to-end "Transaction Bridge" between the Athlete Mobile App and the Admin Control Tower. This phase was critical for testing how athletes interacted with complex monetization dashboards under "high-pressure" simulations mimicking the distracting environments of a locker room or training field.
Through moderated usability testing and behavioral data analysis, I tracked "Time-to-Task" for key actions like digital contract signing and NIL event registration. These insights allowed me to refine the Choice Architecture, simplifying financial data into intuitive, actionable tasks that directly reduced user drop-off during the onboarding phase.
Prototype of the mobile app for athletes usability test
Launch and Outcome
I successfully led the strategic launch of the LockedIn HQ ecosystem, transitioning from a research-driven hypothesis to a market-validated financial platform. By architecting a "Transaction Bridge" that prioritizes data transparency, I turned complex NIL compliance into a scalable business engine that has already secured significant venture interest and user traction.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Waitlist Velocity: Engineered a high-conversion CRM and waitlist strategy that generated 1,000+ verified athlete sign-ups in less than 7 days.
Deployment Status: The Web App (Admin Control Tower) is currently live and managing enterprise data, while the Mobile App is in active development to finalize the athlete-facing experience.
Revenue & Growth: The platform has already processed $124.5K in total revenue and successfully passed the first stage of securing a $1M Seed Investment.
Stakeholder Expansion: Secured 10+ major brand partnerships, validating the platform’s "Source of Truth" for recruiters and brand agents.
Reflective Impact: Leading with Ownership
As the CTO and Product Designer, my role was to ensure that every design decision directly supported our fundraising and scaling goals. By building a Design System that could handle 1,300+ active users while remaining technically lean, I provided the structural confidence required to attract a $1M seed round. This project stands as proof of my ability to say, "I've got this," from the first user interview to the final investor pitch, delivering a product that is both human-centered and investor-ready.
The old messy Google Sheet previously used by the admin for the opportunities command center
The new solution view of the admin accessing opportunities command center