Courtify:
AI-Powered Basketball Training Application
Problem Statement
Basketball training today can often be expensive, inconsistent, and dependent on access to specialized coaching or equipment. For many amateur and aspiring players, it’s challenging to track their progress and improve their technique without structured guidance, making skill development out of reach.
Overview
Courtify is a mobile app designed to revolutionize basketball training through AI-powered shot tracking. By offering real-time feedback, personalized training plans, and detailed progress analytics, Courtify delivers high quality coaching experience that is available to players at any skill level, making high-quality coaching more accessible.
Key Challenge:
How might we make basketball training more affordable, data-driven, and accessible for players at all skill levels?
UX/UI Case Study
(HCDE 318: Intro to User-Centered Design)
UX Research, UI Design, Prototyping, Usability Testing
10 weeks
Team A.S.K
(Anushreya Karir, Shenna Shim, Kulbir Singh)
Final Design
Our high-fidelity prototype brings together all the core features of our application, which are shaped by continuous research, testing, and iteration throughout the quarter. Every design decision— from layout to user flow—was directly influenced by the insights we gathered during our process.
Expand for a better view of the protype
Research & Insights
User Research
To better understand the needs of our users, we conducted semi-structured interviews with individuals of varying basketball skill levels. Each team members conducted 3 interviews. Our goals were to:
Gauge user interest in a mobile training app
Explore ways to offer personalized training regimens without high costs
Understand how to keep users motivated—especially through gamification or competitive featurese conducted semi-structured interviews with individuals of varying basketball skills, followed by competitive analysis and user testing evaluations. Our main goals were to assess interest in using the application, find efficient ways to provide personalized training regimens without cost, and explore how to keep users motivated through gamification or competitive experiences.
We also ran a competitive analysis of existing basketball training tools and followed up with early usability testing evaluations to validate common pain points.
From this research, we found that many players struggled with inconsistent coaching, lacked tools to track progress, and were looking for more engaging ways to improve their skills. These insights shaped our central challenge:
How might we make basketball training more accessible, data-driven, and affordable for players of all skill levels—while keeping it engaging and motivating?
User Personas
To better align our solution with real user needs, we created personas representing our target audience. These personas helped guide design decisions and feature prioritization. Two examples are:
Katie Scott - a college sophomore who plays recreationally and is looking for a fun low pressure way to track progress. (influenced our simple onboarding and gamification features)
Damian Curry - a professional-level basketball player seeking structured training and looking for an enhanced personal training regimen. (guided our shot analytics and personalized training plans)
Journey map
I created a user journey map for Katie, a recreational basketball player, to better understand her experience with Courtify across different stages—from initial discovery to post-training reflection.
By mapping her touchpoints, emotional highs and lows, and design opportunities, I was able to identify key pain points like camera angle setup, confusion around analytics, and feelings of isolation during training. These insights directly influenced our design decisions, leading to clearer onboarding, simplified analytics, and features that encourage community support.
This map helped me prioritize solutions that support both usability and motivation, especially for casual users who want to feel guided and encouraged as they improve.
Low Fidelity Wireframes
We began by making quick paper prototypes to explore layout ideas and core user flows. After gathering feedback through initial testing, we translated those sketches into low-fidelity wireframes that focused on structure, clarity, and functionality.
These wireframes helped us map out key interactions—like starting a training session, setting up the virtual court, and reviewing session stats—while keeping the design flexible for future iterations. Below is an example for one wireframe flow.
Information Architecture
After drafting wireframes highlighting interactions our users will repeatedly engage with, we created a simple information architecture (IA) diagram of the modules and screens in our application. Our IA includes top-level components and subcomponents that show different 'locations' where users might find themselves. The structure ensures that casual and competitive users can quickly access the features most relevant to them, whether running a drill, checking progress, or challenging a friend.
Our IA is centered around the Home screen as the primary hub, branching into:
Training – separated into beginner, intermediate, and advanced drills
Analytics – with access to both session-based and all-time performance data
Friends & Leaderboard – supporting social engagement and competition
Virtual Setup & Help – for onboarding and assistance
Authentication – handling user account creation and login
Usability testing
The purpose of this evaluation was to gauge how well users are able to utilize the app’s UI to complete various tasks such as onboarding (creating a personalized profile), setting up AR courts & analyzing session data, and using community building tools. Three people with different basketball experiences tested our application and gave feedback. Testing was done remotely via Zoom, and users interacted with the prototype on their own devices.
Our goals were to observe how users navigated key features such as profile creation, post-session analytics, and finding online matches. Testing was open-ended, followed by structured post-task questions to capture qualitative feedback and identify usability pain points.
🗂️ Our main objectives were to:
Assess whether users could complete core tasks without guidance
Observe any confusion or pain points in navigation and layout
Gather feedback on the clarity of the setup process and data presentation
High Fidelity prototype
Our high-fidelity prototype brings together all the core features of our application, which are shaped by continuous research, testing, and iteration throughout the quarter. Every design decision— from layout to user flow—was directly influenced by the insights we gathered during our process.
Another key aspect of our Hi-Fidelity prototype is how we showcase information to the user with clarity and simplicity. Since Courtify is built for basketball players at all skill levels, we opted for a clean, minimalist interface that presents information in an intuitive and accessible way, without overwhelming the user.
Interactive prototype available at the top of this project.
Reflection
The biggest challenge I faced during this project was translating the full vision of Courtify into a design that felt intentional, focused, and inclusive, especially within the time constraints. With just a couple of weeks to design after completing the research and setup phases, my team had to make tough decisions about what features to prioritize and how to present them.
If I had more time, I would’ve explored more complex interactions and conducted deeper user research to better understand the needs of a wider range of players. That said, I’m proud of how I approached each stage with intention—whether it was designing wireframes that were easy to follow, refining the onboarding flow based on feedback, or creating an analytics experience that felt empowering.
This project pushed me to grow as a designer, especially in balancing functionality with accessibility, and in understanding how to make tech feel not just usable, but genuinely motivating. I’m excited to keep improving this concept—and to take what I’ve learned into future work.
Thanks for checking out Courtify!
Feel free to reach out if you have feedback, questions, or just want to chat design 👋