KCTL Volunteer Engagement App

Kings County Tennis League (KCTL) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit dedicated to providing free tennis instruction and other programming to youth living in and around Brooklyn Public Housing. Like many non-profit organizations, KCTL heavily relies on volunteerism. As a KCTL volunteer of more than 4 years, I identified an opportunity to lend my UX design skills and pilot a volunteer app to improve the volunteer, student, and staff experience. Currently, KCTL lacks a consistent way of confirming how many volunteers plan to attend a session, which sometimes results in staffing shortages. I hypothesized that a KCTL volunteer app that lets users plan their schedules and communicates availability will improve the overall session experience — for volunteers, students, and staff — by ensuring sufficient coverage for the lessons.


My Role:

To date, I’ve served as the UX designer and researcher from the discovery phase through usability testing. Pending the completion of usability testing, I intend to code a functional MVP with AI and design a pilot.


Approach Summary:

  • To get started, I reviewed and synthesized existing research related to KCTL volunteerism.

  • Next, I developed volunteer and staff personas and a current-state user journey map.

  • Then I ideated and sketched initial designs on paper before creating digital wireframes and a clickable prototype in Figma.

  • Currently, I’m in the process of testing the clickable prototype with KCTL volunteers. This research is intended to help determine (a) whether KCTL volunteers are motivated and willing to use an app to indicate availability (yes / no / maybe) ahead of sessions and (b) understand what factors increase or decrease perceived value and adoption.

Throughout the process to date, I leveraged AI to accelerate my design and research workflows. For example, this includes using ChatGPT for the following:

  • Expanding and summarizing a competitor audit.

  • Pressure-testing choices for the information architecture.

  • Workshopping UX writing for more realistic wireframes.

  • Summarizing and refining a user research plan and associated discussion guides.

Select Artifacts (to date)

[NOTE - images and captions below to be updated]

Upon log-in, site leads see a privacy notice to reinforce the importance of protecting users’ Personally Identifiable Information (PII), especially that of minors. Note, all student info shown across the prototype screenshots is mock data.

I included total counts of students in attendance by skill level. The dot icons represent the different groups that students are broken into based on age and skill level: Red (R), Orange (O), and Green (G) ball groups. (These classifications come from the USTA’s Net Generation model for youth tennis.) The counts (and percent of students present) dynamically update as students check in. This is a potential first step towards helping site leads break out students across the courts or for certain team-based activities, if research validates that site leads find this type of functionality useful.

I created the concept of a family unit for the prototype to help site leads check in siblings who often arrive together in a single click. Similar to the skill level badges and counts (above), I plan to confirm the utility of this through user interviews with site leads.

First, I incorporated a search feature so that site leads don’t need to scroll through the full list of names to check in a student. Second, I created an “Export Attendance” button/feature for sharing the information with the Program Manager. For the purposes of the prototype, I decided to keep this lightweight (clicking the button exports the data to a spreadsheet for the site lead to download and send to the Program Manager). Future app iterations will likely incorporate further features to finalize and submit attendance for a given session.

Next Steps:

  • Complete usability study with volunteers, then staff.

  • Incorporate feedback into high-fidelity prototype and MVP (through AI-assisted coding).

  • Plan potential pilot with a KCTL site. If successful, scale across sites.


What I'm Proud of:

  • Leveraged my design skills and behavioral science experience to meaningfully contribute to KCTL in a new way, beyond on-court volunteering and fundraising.

  • Led a participatory design process that engages staff and volunteers at each step and feeds learnings back into the organization.

  • Helped advance KCTL’s volunteerism-related priorities of getting volunteers more engaged, communicating realtime on-court opportunities, and creating more transparency in attendance, as stated by the Executive Director.