I started at PrizePicks in August 2023.

At the time, there were only two designers and not much of a design process. I helped form a plan to hire, scale the team, and establish a process from research to delivery. By the time I left, we had grown the team to 12 designers and researchers. I had 8 direct reports.

I started as the lead designer and was later promoted to Director. I oversaw the design and research team for the core PrizePicks app, which had millions of daily active users and generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.

It was an incredible experience working at such a hyper-growth startup, which became the fastest-growing sports app in the country—hitting #1 ahead of competitors like DraftKings and FanDuel.

Project 1 - Building the team and a design process that could scale

Design was initially a bit of an afterthought. The original design came from an agency, but without design being embedded in the product development process, it quickly became outdated. Product would form new requirements and features - and engineering would just build them directly into the app. Over time, this led to design files not matching production and created a disjointed user experience.

Our first priority was to rebuild the design foundation across the entire app and establish a design system that could scale.

One of the things I advocated for early on was building a user research function so we could inform our roadmap through generative research. We brought on an amazing researcher, Frank DePalma (formerly at Meta). Frank was a game-changer—he scaled the research team to 5 and helped define a generative research process the product team could use to guide decision-making. And we brought on Shane Foster and Sean Sewell to help establish our design system.

My main contributions included hiring, establishing a Double Diamond design process, conducting a foundational journey map, creating a structure for the design team, and developing a design sprint framework that helped the team align quickly and execute with clarity.

I oversaw the design of multiple high value projects, including the redesign of the entire core PrizePicks app.

Project 2 - Redesign the back office internal tools

The entire PrizePicks app was powered by a set of outdated, spaghetti-coded backend tools that enabled internal teams to manage core aspects of the business. These tools handled everything from setting projections and processing trades to finalizing entries, managing transactions, and controlling permissions. It was a massive part of the business—and a total mess.

At the time, there were four separate web applications powering the back office, each with its own workflows and inconsistencies. Our objective was to consolidate these into a single, unified platform that could support multiple internal teams, including Game Operations, Member Operations, and Support.

The focus of the redesign was efficiency, usability, and trainability.

I was the sole designer on this project. I redesigned the entire experience from the ground up and led the migration away from the legacy systems to a new internal product suite. In addition to delivering the full design, I also laid the foundation for the internal design system used across these tools.

Project 3 - Redesigning the core app

There is a major case study to unpack here but I won't get too much into the details of how our team elevated the standard of the core iOS and Android app but it was a multi team effort across product, design, engineering, and creative brand team.

What matters is the end result of a teams effort to design the most user friendly Daily Fantasy Sports app in the market.