In a recent project, we worked with Moonshot Sports to revolutionize how teams are taught, trained, and coached. The Team Nation App provides a new way to access sports playbooks inline, with the needs of modern users:

Not just by reading but through interaction and gamification.

When they came to Fresh, that was an essential element of Moonshot Sports’s vision. They wanted to create a learning management system for sports teams, translating coaches’ strategic visions into a fun and engaging format.

The challenge to capture hearts and minds

We anticipated convincing coaches to switch from traditional paper playbooks to a digital platform would be challenging.

1. The app needed to be so engaging that players would love using it and learn faster.
2. Onboarding entire teams to a new format, quickly, was crucial.

By proving that the app was better for players—the ultimate end users—we could meet the goal of not only building the platform within six months (before the start of the fall football season) but also capturing players’ interest. 

We focused on mobile app development, user experience, and designing a platform that coaches and players would find intuitive and efficient. This required diving deep into the world of coaches and players. We talked with them, learned about their needs and challenges, and used these insights to guide our design.

A learning management system designed for the fast-paced world of sports

Efficiency for our users meant less time on the screen and more time on the field. This required challenging our traditional notion of content management systems to design something that was engaging, educational, and highly usable for an audience in a specific setting. 

Our design decisions were made with the key objective of allowing coaches to manage playbooks easily, draw plays, assign quizzes, and analyze results.

Gamifying learning and onboarding

Being a new player—or even an existing player—involves learning complex schemes and approaches to a sport.

We knew onboarding had to be quick and easy. So, we designed a flexible process, giving coaches various ways to invite players and making it simple for players to join teams. To keep players coming back, we introduced gamification. Players could build profiles, compete with one another, and genuinely enjoy the learning process. 

This approach turned mundane playbook learning into an exciting game.

Improving Xs and Os with a game-changing app

We launched the web, iOS, and Android apps in time for the season, and the response was overwhelming:

• An MVP that was well-received by coaches and players
• Over 1000 teams signed up within 6 months of launch
• Success that allowed Moonshot Sports to secure investment for the next expansion phase

The Team Nation app isn’t just another tech tool; it’s a game-changer in how sports teams learn and train. With it, Moonshot Sports is not just teaching plays; they’re shaping the future of team training. Matt Clayton, the co-founder of Moonshot Sports, gave us a fantastic quote that illustrates the value the app delivered:

“Thank you SO MUCH for delivering the Team Nation app at a high quality and on time. So awesome and impressive, and it means the world to us.”

The project is another testament to the power of collaboration and how innovation can change any industry.