The official NBA App
Services
Research, Design, Systems, User Testing
Team
Design Research, Product Management, Engineering, Analytics
Services
Research, Design, Systems, User Testing
Timeline
2021-2026
During my time as Director of Product Design at the NBA, I began by helping lead product design for the official NBA App (iOS, Android, connected devices, emerging platforms) and managed a team of 3 designers across mobile, design systems, and connected devices (tvOS, Roku, Apple Vision Pro). Users in 200+ markets, with over 1B fans globally.
By highlighting features like Tap to Watch, 24/7 live programming, and our unprecedented access, we show how the App streamlines the live game journey and keeps fans connected to what’s happening across the league at all times.
Sports Emmy nominee, Outstanding Digital Innovation — NBA App "Reimagined," 44th Annual Sports Emmy Awards (2023) — confirmed via official NATAS nominee announcement
Apple Design Award (2026)
The reimagined app drove:
+43%
YoY growth in NBA Subscribers
+42%
YoY increase in downloads across iOs
4.7
Star rating on App Store (from 2.2)
Inherting a mess
A tale of broken UX
The fans were losing trust in the NBA.
The NBA had outsourced design work for years. The result: the app looked like it was built by different teams (because it was 🫠).
iOS looked different from Android. Web didn't match either. Interactions were inconsistent. User flows contradicted each other. A fan could have three completely different experiences depending on which device they used.
—-
The NBA had outsourced design work for years. The result: the app looked like it was built by different teams (because it was). iOS looked different from Android. Web didn't match either. Interactions were inconsistent. User flows contradicted each other. A fan could have three completely different experiences depending on which device they used.
Here's what was wrong
Trust was breaking fast
A fractured UI tells fans the product can't be trusted, before they've read a word of copy.
[X% drop in app store rating / X support tickets citing "confusing UI"]
New platform, zero head start
tvOS, Vision Pro, iOs — each one meant rebuilding from scratch.
[X weeks/months to ship a new platform before Kinetic vs. X after]
Quality had no owner.
Design was distributed across contractors and agencies. No single person owned quality. No culture. No continuity.
Now we had a plan
Build a system and the right team to operate it
Kinetic Design System In an effort to fix The Design team bgean build the beginngins. We took cures from various souces built a unified component library, design tokens, and interaction patterns for iOS, Android, tvOS, and web.Before Kinetic, every platform reinvented the button, the card, the navigation. After Kinetic, there's one button. One card. One language. Consistency solved at the source.
—-
The Diagnosis: The problem wasn't design skill. The problem was architecture. We had good designers, but no system. No shared language. No place for consistency to live.
The Strategy: Rather than hire more designers to patch the holes, I proposed something different:
First, build a design system (Kinetic) — a shared foundation that would become the single source of truth for every platform
Second, build a team that owns consistency — designers who care about systems, not just individual features
Third, sequence the work strategically — fix iOS (flagship), then Android (parity), then tvOS (new context), then Vision Pro (new paradigm)
—-
Why This Approach:Systems first solves the root problem. More designers ≠ less fragmentation. A shared system does.
A small, intentional team beats scattered contractors. Ownership matters. Culture matters.
Sequencing platforms on a shared system means each one gets faster. iOS took [X months], Android took [X months], tvOS took [X months], Vision Pro took [X months].
The Kinetic Design Sytem
The iOS redesign established the new consistent design language. Android came shortly after as a thoughtful adaptation of the same language to Android conventions. For the first time, iOS and Android felt like the same app.
Android launched with [X%] feature parity and [Y rating]. Both platforms hit [X million] users combines.
[IMG: Side-by-side of iOS and Android showing how same component adapts to platform conventions — button style, navigation, color application]
The hard part: getting buy-in
How I Got Buy-In (Executive Influence): [PLACEHOLDER — dig through your docs and replace with the real story]
Who I pitched: [e.g. VP of Product / CTO / exec steering committee]
What I asked for: [e.g. dedicated headcount for a systems team instead of more feature contractors; protected roadmap time to build Kinetic before new features]
How I framed the tradeoff: [e.g. reframed "slower now" as "faster forever" — showed the cost of rebuilding from scratch on every new platform vs. investing once]
What I secured: [e.g. budget/headcount, executive sponsorship that shielded the team from feature pressure during the build]
Result: [e.g. this became the basis for shipping 4 platforms in under 2 years instead of rebuilding per-platform]
[IMG: Diagram showing the old model (fragmented contractors) vs. new model (unified team + Kinetic system as backbone)]
Mobile: iOS + Android
The iOS redesign established the new consistent design language. Android came shortly after as a thoughtful adaptation of the same language to Android conventions. For the first time, iOS and Android felt like the same app.
Android launched with [X%] feature parity and [Y rating]. Both platforms hit [X million] users combines.
[IMG: Side-by-side of iOS and Android showing how same component adapts to platform conventions — button style, navigation, color application]
Execution
Building a platform for every surface
Kinetic Design System In an effort to fix The Design team bgean build the beginngins. We took cures from various souces built a unified component library, design tokens, and interaction patterns for iOS, Android, tvOS, and web.Before Kinetic, every platform reinvented the button, the card, the navigation. After Kinetic, there's one button. One card. One language. Consistency solved at the source.
Mobile: iOS + Android
The iOS redesign established the new consistent design language. Android came shortly after as a thoughtful adaptation of the same language to Android conventions. For the first time, iOS and Android felt like the same app.
Android launched with [X%] feature parity and [Y rating]. Both platforms hit [X million] users combines.
Make your personal leadership unmistakable. “We built” is good, but regularly specify “I set the strategy,” “I hired/managed,” “I aligned product and engineering,” and “I made the sequencing decision.”
[IMG: Side-by-side of iOS and Android showing how same component adapts to platform conventions — button style, navigation, color application]
Connected Devices
tvOS proved the system worked outside mobile. Same component library, completely different context (10-foot viewing, non-touch input, social watching). Shipping tvOS in 4 months proved Kinetic was doing its job.
Top-Performing Features
Feature 1
quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Maecenas malesuada. Praesent congue erat at massa.
Featurequis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Maecenas malesuada. Praesent congue erat at massa. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Phasellus accumsan cursus velit. Vestibulum ante ipsum
Quick moments to digest
quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Maecenas malesuada. Praesent congue erat at massa. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Phasellus accumsan cursus velit. Vestibulum ante ipsum
Apple Vision Pro
Vision Pro had no prior playbook. But Kinetic gave us a language to speak from — principles, patterns, tokens — that we could extend to spatial. No playbook meant we had to think carefully about what makes NBA App feel like NBA App, beyond just "what do buttons look like." That's systems thinking.
The court comes to life
quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Maecenas malesuada. Praesent congue erat at massa. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Phasellus accumsan cursus velit. Vestibulum ante ipsum .
Dogfooding the UX
With the Apple Vision Pro being under lock and key in our NY and NJ offices, we were able to test out the expeirnces and learn how some of our
Here I am watching a game and interacting with the controls
Results
Measuring what matters
Kinetic Design System In an effort to fix The Design team bgean build the beginngins. We took cures from various souces built a unified component library, design tokens, and interaction patterns for iOS, Android, tvOS, and web.Before Kinetic, every platform reinvented the button, the card, the navigation. After Kinetic, there's one button. One card. One language. Consistency solved at the source.
Key Performance Indicators (KPI)
The iOS redesign established the new consistent design language. Android came shortly after as a thoughtful adaptation of the same language to Android conventions. For the first time, iOS and Android felt like the same app.
Android launched with [X%] feature parity and [Y rating]. Both platforms hit [X million] users combines.
Make your personal leadership unmistakable. “We built” is good, but regularly specify “I set the strategy,” “I hired/managed,” “I aligned product and engineering,” and “I made the sequencing decision.”
[IMG: Side-by-side of iOS and Android showing how same component adapts to platform conventions — button style, navigation, color application]
Apple Vision Pro
We applied the same principles of Kinetic Design across Apple Vision Pro - a totally new form factor none of us were
Have me be a cool animation in “Don’t try to be original. Just try to be good.” - Paul Rand. Also, my professor used to say "Never give the client options, they'll always pick the wrong one". I
First Last
Measuring what matterrs
Did we hit our goals?
Consistency. Familiar patterns on iOS, Android, tvOS, Vision Pro. Users trust the app more.
Speed. Because design decisions were made once (in Kinetic), each platform launched faster.
Quality. One design language means fewer edge cases, fewer bugs, fewer support tickets.