UI/UX Design, Graphic Design, ios design, Product DesignRailbird.ai Alpha Release
UI/UX design for the Alpha version of Railbird.ai, a pool statistic analytic application designed to help players improve their performance.
Role
User Researcher
UI/UX Designer
Graphic Designer
Timeline
August 2024 - December 2024
Tools
Figma, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop
Team
Independent designer in a team of 5 engineers
What is Railbird.AI? What am I doing here?
Mastering a skill is no easy feat, whether it’s art, coding, or sports. We've all heard that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to reach mastery, but getting there requires persistence and dedication. As an artist, I've learned that as you reach higher skill levels, progress becomes harder to see, making it more challenging to stay motivated. Mastery isn’t just about time spent—it’s also about identifying weaknesses and focusing on improvement. However, recognizing those areas on your own can be difficult, and not everyone has access to mentors who can provide expert guidance.
Therefore, three friends who love to play pool started Railbird.AI to help other pool players gain mastery by using AI to identify flaws, show progress, and provide the necessary encouragement to keep improving.
With a team of engineers, they were able to build a backbone for the app. Powerful as it is, it lacks a human-centered aspect. Railbird presents player performance data through monotonous graphs, which can be overwhelming to interpret for the average user. With so many complex features such as a unique filtering system that shows the video clip and data of specific types of shots, accessible and intuitive navigation of the app became a challenge.
Early version of Railbird when I first joined the team
I was brought onto the team to shape the app into one that is well-loved and intuitive to use for the average pool player. My focus was on making the app accessible to players of differing abilities, some of whom are of an older generation. Here are some things I did to achieve this goal:
Identify the needs of pool players by interviewing potential users.
Find the best way to help pool players consistently practice.
Present data in an easily understandable manner.
Design a video player (the main selling point of Railbird!) that is easy to navigate at first glance.
Simplify complex filtering system into one that is easily navigatable by users.
Discover methods to make the app “sticky.”
Create appealing visuals and UI that follow industry standards.
Main challenges I faced while designing Railbird
As an early-stage startup, Railbird’s main priority is to secure funding by getting users who are willing to pay for the service. As a result, a designer such as myself has to set a balance between what users need and what the business requires. This often leads to addition of features that users do not feel strongly about, but adds to the stickiness of the app. It also means constantly stashing ideas to the backlog that meet user needs but require a significant amount of time and engineering work to implement (i.e. many users stated that they want AI summarization of what they need to improve on, instead of just providing data. This is currently difficult to implement, especially on a strict timeline to launch).
Railbird’s prioritization is constantly in flux. What usually ends up happening is that the priority shifts from creating visually appealing UI to getting a feature out in the fastest way possible. This is the main reason why some of my designs do not visually match up with what ended up being implemented in the Alpha version of the app, although the user experience is not affected. Being the only designer in a full team of engineers, I’ve learned to adapt and work around situations such as this, but still push for my ideas when it is absolutely necessary.
Work in progress…
Meanwhile, please check out my other works: