Overview

Strategic Automation of Tournament Logic

This project transforms the reliance of badminton clubs on manual scorekeeping, paper records, and spreadsheets for managing complex tournaments into a streamlined mobile app. As a solo designer, I crafted the solution to automate tournament logic and ensure real-time data visualization under extreme time constraints.

This is an individual submission for Protothon 2025 (a global UX hackathon) hosted by DubsTech and DesignBuddies in May 2025, which won 2nd place in the Enterprise category among 20+ global submissions.

Hackathon Challenge

Clubs still rely on manual/semi-digital processes for organizing and managing tournaments, which are time-consuming, prone to errors, and lack the real-time engagement and efficiency needed for fast-paced tournaments.

Success Criteria

• The logic must seamlessly handle all tournament progression (including dropouts) without manual administrator intervention.
• The interface must clearly present complex data (brackets, scores, player ranking) to users under time pressure.

Goals

• Design the logic and flows necessary to automate tournament setup and management.
• Create a simple, intuitive mobile interface for managing dense, real-time data and multiple user flows.

Target Audience

• Club Administrators: Need to set up and manage complex draws/tournaments effortlessly and reliably.
• Umpires: Require a quick, intuitive interface for managing real-time scores in a fast-paced environment.

Design Process

Ruthless Prioritization
Under Pressure

To deliver a high-quality, end-to-end solution in just 28 hours, the design process was lean and highly constrained, focusing on velocity and the most impactful features:

• Conducting secondary research by analyzing online reviews, performing competitive analysis, and personally using available apps.
• Analyzing research data and sketching out solutions for the top 4 high-priority issues for primary users.
• Converting sketches into wireframes and a high-fidelity prototype.
• Creating a pitch deck to present the design solution to hackathon judges.

Empathize & Define

Rapid Discovery of Complex Tournament Logic

My first strategic call was to skip primary research and dedicate all the available time to understanding the problem space and designing the solution.

I focused heavily on secondary research and deep study of badminton knockout tournaments and brackets/draws, since these were new concepts for me and were the core of the problem statement. I watched videos and used AI tools to understand and clarify various scenarios (knockouts, brackets, etc.).

Key Insights

• No direct competitors

They were all either solely score-tracking apps or general tournament creation apps.

• Defining 'How Might We's for primary users:

Ideate

Automation, Customization, & Templatization!

My solution focused on eliminating manual administrative work and creating an efficient operational workflow through three interconnected features:

• Automate and templatize tournament setups – including bracket/draw creation.
• Allow intuitive controls and customizability, as different badminton clubs can have different rules.
• Provide quick and familiar ways to share results online via social media apps, QR codes, and downloads.

I drew rough sketches (time was of the essence) for figuring out screen-to-screen flows, card layouts for tournament setups, tournament logic for various scenarios (bracket setups, dropout calculation, etc.), and high-level elements I wanted to include in the screens using the Crazy 8’s technique, which I then converted to wireframes in Figma.

This pre-design systemic approach was essential for the technical feasibility of a rapid prototype, given the time constraint.

Design & Prototype

Engineering the
Visual System for Speed

Reflection & Next Steps

Solo Win Impact

Honestly, winning 2nd place in a solo 28-hour sprint was extremely rewarding. It proved that I could combine strategic product thinking with rapid, high-quality execution — a skill that’s vital in any fast-moving tech environment.

• Constraint-Driven prioritization: The time limit forced me to be really smart about where I spent my energy. I had to practice ruthless scoping and strategic product thinking to deliver a complete MVP — a necessary skill to have in fast-moving tech environments.
• Embrace existing design systems: The intentional strategy to leverage existing UI systems (instead of customizing every pixel) was the single most important factor in meeting the deadline. This drove home the point, again, that design is often about velocity and systemic thinking, all highly important for reducing speed-to-market.
• Mastery of complex workflows and concepts: Successfully translating the intricate, rule-based badminton knockout/bracket logic into a seamless, automated digital experience showed me that I can confidently tackle any complex B2B workflow and learn complex concepts in a pinch.

The next steps would be to design the full player-side mobile experience to complete the end-to-end workflow of the product, conduct usability testing on the bracket experience to establish a baseline KPI, aiming to reduce manual scoring errors by at least 50%, and flesh out the design system to manage future expansions.