Summary

A 10-week sprint to build Athlete Portal for Garmin Clipboard led to 10x growth over the following year

In 2022, I worked in the Garmin Labs innovation group as a product design intern. There, I helped launch Athlete Portal: the athlete-focused experience for the Garmin Clipboard team training app.

I designed wireframes, tested prototypes, and collected user research insights that led to multiple features in Athlete Portal. Now, team sport athletes can use Garmin Clipboard to access essential aspects of their training like coach communications, details about upcoming workouts, and pain/injury tracking.

Responsibilities

Product Design
User Research
Usability Testing

Deliverables

High Fidelity UI Documentation
Interactive Prototypes
Marcom Graphics
Usability Study Reports
Wireframes

Tools

Figma
JIRA
Microsoft Suite

Timeline

10 weeks
Summer 2022

Goal

Help athletes better understand their training, performance, and recovery

It's hard for athletes to analyze their training without their coach's guidance. Spotting positive trends in fitness or detecting early signs of injury can be difficult without regular check-ins with a coach, who can have 80 other athletes to manage at a time.

Athlete portal is designed to help athletes prepare for and reflect on their training experiences, even when coach isn't there to help.

Research Sprint

Uncovering 3 new features for athletes

I hit the ground running by walking through the existing user research and analyzing early wireframes for Athlete Portal. To assess which features our team should prioritize, I proposed and led a user research sprint with 5 NCAA and club team athletes.

I created interactive prototypes to assess feature usability and wrote semi-structured interview questions to understand the challenges and successes athletes experience when training on a team. 3 key findings from the user research sprint led to new features in Athlete Portal.

Finding 01

"If coach hasn't explained the metric, I'll ignore it."

Insight: athletes are motivated to improve their health metrics, but only when they understand what they mean and how to change them. During interviews, athletes shared that when they are faced with many metrics, they don't know what values or trends to pay attention to and instead ignore them.

Recovery metric charts provide recommendations to improve athletic readiness between workouts. Outliers from the last 7 days are highlighted, so athletes can see if their workouts might be negatively impacted by changes in their resting heart rate, sleep, or body battery.

Finding 02

"Jounaling is essential for my training awareness."

100%

of NCAA athletes in the study said they journal to learn what works best for them in their training

Insight: athletes struggle to track private training details. Coaches often ask athletes to share training details after a workout. Sometimes, athletes want to keep notes to themself. It's frustrating for them to record their training in two different places.

Private settings for notes and injury tracking give athletes the ability to record their training experiences or monitor injuries for themselves. Athletes can share their experiences with coaches, or track privately for their own reference.

Finding 03

"I keep my goal on a sticky note next to my bed, so I see it every day."

Insight: athletes want to be reminded of their goals and achievements. 3 out of 5 athletes shared that they lose track of their goals in the hustle of their competition season. One athlete shared that they write down and cross off each goal they reach to stay motivated.

A sticky note with goal race times crossed out

Goals and personal bests encourage athletes to remember what they've done so far. Athletes can keep track of records for running, swimming, weightlifting, and more, while their next goal can be broken down into smaller steps that lead to bigger wins.

Takeaway

Athletes need to reflect on quantitative and qualitative aspects of their training

Athletes shared that their biggest breakthroughs come from reflecting on both quantitative data like mileage and qualitative data like their mood, goals, and achievements.

Athlete Portal keeps all aspects of training data in one place to help athletes better connect with and understand their training.

Outcome

Athlete Portal helps athletes worldwide track and reflect on their training

Thanks to the designers, engineers, product managers, and leaders on the Clipboard team, the launch of the Athlete Portal update immediately impacted the Clipboard coaching platform. The update led to our user base growing by tens of thousands in less than a year and is now available in more than 100 countries!

During my internship, I've represented Garmin at coaching clinics and national championship races in Kansas, California, and Oregon. At these events I'm able to gather feedback about Clipboard and observe how athletes and coaches operate while they're in their element.

Looking Ahead

What's next?

I'm continuing on the Clipboard team as a product designer in Garmin Labs, as well as supporting additional projects for cutting edge fitness and sports performance technologies.

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