Building the discovery layer for pickleball
Lead Product Designer · Discovery to launch, mobile first
Summary
Open Play Finder is a mobile-first community platform for finding pickleball courts, joining open play sessions, and connecting with players and coaches. As lead product designer (via Tangerine), I designed the product and the website from scratch: onboarding, court discovery, session RSVP, Creator Pro tools, messaging, and tournaments. I designed it in Subframe, a collaborative designer-AI tool. The product is live at openplayfinder.com, and the designs were used directly in the seed round raise.
Live
Shipped and usable today in Las Vegas
Seed
Designs used directly in the investor raise
6
Core flows designed end-to-end
Solution
Here are some of the key flows
Find a court in seconds
Location-based discovery with filter layers for surface type, indoor or outdoor, lighting, and live open play availability, built for someone already on their way.
A feed that replaces the Facebook group
Sessions, courts, and players in one social layer, so organizing a game stops depending on word of mouth and scattered group chats.
Tournaments without the spreadsheet
Registration, brackets, and real-time scores for local tournaments, giving organizers tools that used to live in Excel.
A website designed from scratch
Beyond the product, I designed the full openplayfinder.com experience: court and team discovery pages, real-time check-in surfaces, and the marketing site that converts visitors into the community.
Overview
The sport is growing. The infrastructure isn't.
Pickleball is the fastest-growing sport in the US, but finding a court, joining an open play session, or discovering local coaches is still a patchwork of Facebook groups and word of mouth. Open Play Finder set out to fix that.
The app is live and usable today. Users can sign up, onboard, discover courts, RSVP for sessions, and connect with Creators.
Problem
Two very different users. One product.
The product had to serve two distinct audiences simultaneously: players looking to find courts and sessions, and Creators (coaches, organizers, club operators) who needed tools to build a presence and manage attendance. A single experience for both groups meant constant prioritization decisions about hierarchy and feature surfacing.
Every screen had to serve a player arriving for the first time and a Creator Pro managing their schedule. That tension drove almost every layout decision.
Goals
Player goals and Creator goals, mapped to the business.
User goal
Find a court or session nearby with confidence it's actually happening
Business goal
Grow active sessions and repeat weekly usage
User goal
Creators build a presence and fill their sessions without admin pain
Business goal
Creator Pro subscriptions as the revenue engine
User goal
Keep game coordination in one place instead of group chats
Business goal
Community lock-in that compounds as more courts join
Design process
From flows on paper to a live product, designed in Subframe.
I mapped the full player journey first: onboarding with progressive skill and preference collection, discovery, RSVP with waitlists and rosters, then session-day check-in. Creator flows came second, layered onto the same surfaces rather than living in a separate app. Each flow went through wireframes, review with the founding team, and iteration against real court and session data from Las Vegas.
What made this project different: I designed it in Subframe, a collaborative designer-AI tool. Instead of static mocks, every screen was built with real components from day one. I directed the system (hierarchy, states, interaction logic) while the AI accelerated the production work, which meant the founding team reviewed working interfaces instead of pictures of interfaces, and the path from design to shipped product got dramatically shorter.
Artifact
The sign-up flow, mapped end to end: phone, Google/Apple, and email paths converging into onboarding, with every screen linked to its Subframe file.
Artifact
The sign-in counterpart, including recovery and error paths, so engineering never had to guess an edge case.
Artifact
A living changelog: every page update documented with the date, the exact change, and links to the Subframe component, so the whole team stayed in sync.
Onboarding
Progressive skill and preference collection to personalize recommendations from session one.
Court Map
Location-based discovery with filters for surface, indoor/outdoor, lighting, and availability.
Session RSVP
One-tap joining with waitlist, roster preview, and check-in confirmation flows.
Creator Pro
Profile and scheduling tools: session creation, capacity management, follower engagement.
Messaging
Direct and group messaging tied to courts and sessions, replacing external group chats.
Tournaments
Bracket and registration flows with real-time score updates.
The call
Early in the project, there was a real debate: build mobile-first or launch with a responsive web experience first? Web would have meant faster shipping, but the core use case, finding a court on the way there and checking in at the venue, is inherently mobile. We committed to mobile-first and built the web experience as a secondary layer. That decision held up.
Reflection
My key takeaways and learnings
Design for the riskier surface first
Creator Pro got proportionally more design time than player onboarding because it was more visible in investor demos. In hindsight, the first-session player experience was the higher-risk surface. It determines whether someone comes back.
Test with real users early
I'd push for real player user testing in week two, before the Creator Pro work starts. Demos tell you what impresses; testing tells you what retains.
Designing with AI: what Subframe taught me
AI accelerates, the designer decides
Subframe made production dramatically faster, but every call that mattered (hierarchy, edge cases, what a first-time player sees) was still a design decision. The tool amplified judgment; it didn't replace it.
Real components beat pretty mocks
Because every screen was built from working components, stakeholder reviews happened on real interfaces. Feedback got sharper, and handoff friction nearly disappeared.
Curious to know more?
Open Play Finder is live: try it at openplayfinder.com, or get in touch for the full story.
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