Every Event, One Story

Every Event, One Story

Project Overview

Athletes were juggling three–five platforms to find and track events. This created friction, missed races, and fragmented progress tracking. Relay consolidates discovery, registration, and performance tracking into a single platform.

Role: Product Designer
Timeline: 6–8 weeks

Key Goals

  • View and manage athlete's past and future fitness events

  • View a list of up-and-coming fitness events

  • Register for event right there on the page itself

  • A simplified sign-up process

Results

Relay demonstrates the potential for a unified fitness event ecosystem, one that not only connects athletes to races, but keeps them engaged in what comes next. Through research, user interviews, and iterative testing, we translated key user needs into measurable improvements.

Users completed event discovery and registration without assistance during usability testing, validating the platform’s clarity and flow. We reduced the number of steps required to register for an event from 4 to 2, streamlining a previously fragmented process. Additionally, user feedback indicated improved clarity when tracking multiple events, helping athletes better understand their past performance and plan future goals.

Together, these outcomes show how simplifying discovery, centralizing tracking, and surfacing meaningful insights can create a more intuitive and motivating experience for both athletes and organizers.

Research & Insights

We kicked off the project with research interviews with athletes and organizers who have had experience and pain points through signing up for events and organizing events. From there, we explored online research.

Our Research Goals were as follows:

  1. Determine what websites customers use to register for races and competitions.

  2. Understand how registrants promote their events and gather participants.

  3. Determine how to simplify and streamline participants registration for multiple events.

After synthesising our insights, we developed a clear strategy and action plan to achieve our goals.

Affinity Map

Users struggled with fragmented event discovery, unclear navigation, and low subscription transparency. This highlighted the need for a centralized, intuitive platform that builds confidence and clarity.

How might we help athletes track both past and upcoming events across multiple fitness modalities so they can clearly see and reflect on their fitness journey while planning for future goals, while at the same time simplifying the event sign-up process and creating a seamless experience?

Personas

After conducting interviews and based on the key demographics summary we were able to create our User Personas to find our ideal candidate.

Briley King

Briley is an avid runner and attends her local CrossFit gym.

The Over Achiever

Age: 30

Occupation: Marketing Coordinator

Location: Nashville, TN

Background:

Briley is an avid runner and attends her local CrossFit gym.

Needs & Goals

View her times for each race she has competed in the past
View all of her past races in one place
Improve her split times

Frustrations & Pain Points

Can’t see all of their races so it takes more time to research each race she has participated in in the past.

Can’t remember the name of the half-marathon she ran two years ago

Briley King

The Over Achiever

Age: 30

Occupation: Marketing Coordinator

Location: Nashville, TN

Background:

Briley is an avid runner and attends her local CrossFit gym.

Needs & Goals

• View her times for each race she has competed in the past
• View all of her past races in one place
Improve her split times

Frustrations & Pain Points

• Can’t see all of their races so it takes more time to research each race she has participated in in the past.

• Can’t remember the name of the half-marathon she ran two years ago

Rick Hansen

Rick is the owner of a CrossFit gym

The Entrepreneur

Age: 55

Occupation: Gym Owner and Race Event Organizer

Location: Moab, UT

Background:

Rick is the owner of a CrossFit gym and puts on several types of events throughout the year including a 5K, a Cycling race, and a CrossFit competition. Because there are multiple events, he has to go to individual websites for each race to promote and get people registered. He would love to be able to register participants in one central location.

“If only there was one place, one website I could process all of the registers for each event.”

Needs & Goals

Register people for multiple events in one location

One place to easily register people for the race. He wouldn’t have to have multiple urls to keep up with and upload times and keep track of the participants.

Frustrations & Pain Points

In the past I’ve had to remember all the different places I have put the races. It’s difficult to keep track of all of them. I wish I could just point to one location to tell people where to register.

Rick Hansen

The Over Achiever

Age: 30

Occupation: Marketing Coordinator

Location: Nashville, TN

Background:

Briley is an avid runner and attends her local CrossFit gym.

Needs & Goals

• View her times for each race she has competed in the past
• View all of her past races in one place
Improve her split times

Frustrations & Pain Points

• Can’t see all of their races so it takes more time to research each race she has participated in in the past.

• Can’t remember the name of the half-marathon she ran two years ago

Information Architecture Decisions

To reduce friction in event discovery and tracking, I simplified the platform into four core areas balancing the needs of both athletes and event organizers while minimizing navigation complexity.

  • Home — Event discovery and search

  • Profile — Performance tracking across events

  • Settings — Account and preferences

  • Hosting — Organizer tools for event creation

Flow Design & Task Simplification

To map the end-to-end experience, I designed user flows that capture how athletes discover events, register, and manage their activity within the platform. Breaking this down further, I focused on key actions such as signing up for events, hosting events, and tracking performance. These identified friction points, reduce unnecessary steps, and ensure each path felt intuitive from start to finish.

Event registration flow improving clarity and completion.

Wireframes

Starting with early wireframes, I iterated toward high-fidelity designs refining layout, interactions, and visual hierarchy to simplify key user flows. Each iteration focused on reducing friction, improving clarity, and aligning the experience with real user needs.

Branding and UI

Relay is designed around momentum, helping athletes move seamlessly from past performance to future goals. The visual system reinforces this through high-contrast UI, clear hierarchy, and a focused color palette that prioritizes readability and quick decision-making during event discovery and registration.

Accent colors are used sparingly to guide attention to key actions, while a structured typographic system ensures clarity across dense event and performance data.

#121212
#FF522A
#968BAB
#EEEEEE

The color palette uses a dark foundation to prioritize contrast and readability, with a restrained accent color to guide attention toward key actions like search, filtering, and registration.

SF Pro Display

H1

Bold

26 Pt

H3

Bold

16 Pt

P1

Medium

16 Pt

P2

Bold

14 Pt

SF Pro was chosen for its clarity and familiarity, supporting quick, effortless reading across the interface.

Summary

For endurance athletes, tracking competitions often means juggling multiple platforms, spreadsheets, and fragmented tools. Relay simplifies that experience by bringing event discovery, registration, and performance tracking into a single, connected system.

Through research, user interviews, and iterative testing, these needs translated into measurable improvements. Users completed event discovery and registration without assistance during usability testing, validating the platform’s clarity and flow. We reduced the number of steps required to register for an event from 4 to 2, streamlining a previously fragmented process. User feedback also indicated improved clarity when tracking multiple events, helping athletes better understand past performance and plan future goals.

By simplifying discovery, centralizing tracking, and surfacing meaningful insights, Relay creates a more intuitive and motivating experience for both athletes and organizers.