MAS9
Timeline
Early 2025
Responsibility
Led 0-1 Design
Role & Team
Product designer working with
the CEO and 2 software engineers
Overview
Context
In early 2025, I joined MAS9 as a Product Designer, when the platform already had a range of features built out but not around how school administrators actually worked. Core tasks like collecting registrations and handling daily inquiries were still managed manually outside the platform, creating fragmented workflows and significant operational overhead.
Goal
Design a configurable registration form system and a unified messaging tool that school operators can use without leaving the platform.
My Role
As a sole designer, I took full ownership of both workflows from wireframes to final Figma designs, partnering with CEO on problem definition and direction, and working directly with engineers through implementation.
Impact
Lowered the barrier to adoption by making core workflows intuitive and reliable, contributing to scaling from 0 to 100+ paid schools.
Users described the platform as significantly easier than competitor tools.
Why Martial Arts Schools Need a Different Platform
Unlike fitness or beauty industries, martial arts schools primarily serve families with unique operational needs.
Event management (rank promotions, camps, tournaments)
Parent-led registration as primary decision makers for minor students
These requirements directly shaped how I designed the platform, starting with the registration workflow.
Project 1
Registration Form System Design
Challenge
Schools needed a shareable registration link that could handle multiple scenarios such as membership enrollment, trials, and event sign-ups for both existing members and external participants, but no such system existed. As a result, administrators had to manually handle all registrations, making it unsustainable as the number of programs and participants grew.
Approach
Through onboarding calls and direct feedback from school operators, I identified two critical requirements that shaped the feature direction.
Parents are the primary users filling out forms. A major friction point was the inability to register multiple children in a single session. The system needed to distinguish between the 'Payer' (Parent) and 'Participant' (Member).
With a tight 0-1 timeline, I focused on maximizing setup simplicity and system versatility, directly addressing the Interface-Barrier insight.
Flexible to Diverse School Operations:
Accommodates widely varying programs (e.g. Rank promotion test, camps, trials) within a single system.
Lower Barrier for Admins:
Eliminate the "Interface-Barrier" by prioritizing intuitive setup.
Unified Flow for All User Types:
One registration experience that adapts to different user types.
Solution
Ready-made templates (trial sign-up, lead capture, memberships, events) with customizable fields reduce admin burden while supporting diverse needs.
A custom builder was considered, but early feedback showed operators struggled with open-ended configuration, so I chose this approach to lower the setup barrier.
Enabled parents to register multiple family members in a single session with an Add family member flow.
Distinguish between decision maker (parent) and participant (child) data fields, preventing data duplication and ensuring accurate payment attribution.
Result & Learnings
Success
What I'd Improve
Users didn’t immediately recognize that left-panel items were clickable to add to the form
Lacked clear visual affordances for click-to-add interactions
Future Improvement Opportunities
Project 2
Intelligent Messaging System with AI
Challenge
Schools relied on separate email and SMS tools for announcements, which created critical inefficiency as admins frequently had to switch between tools.
This tool fragmentation resulted in a failure to deliver timely, integrated notification across all member channels, leading to members missing urgent updates (e.g. preventing members from showing up to a canceled class).
Approach
Started by unifying email, SMS and push notification into a single interface. This eliminated tool-switching and established a foundation for faster communication.
Once the unified interface was in place, we observed that operators were still spending significant time rewriting the same content for different channel formats.
To address this pain point, I proposed integrating an AI assistant, and structured the AI workflow in two steps, topic, then prompt, to progressively narrow the operator's focus and reduce cognitive load.
Solution
Single creation panel with real-time preview across email, SMS, and push notification formats.
Category-First Selection: Primary categories based on common messaging scenarios for quick discovery.
Prompt Library: Secondary level showing specific prompts within selected category.
Variable Customization: Bracket placeholders (date, event, or title) let operators personalize AI-generated content without rewriting from scratch.
Result & Learnings
Learning
Designing an AI feature for non-technical users pushed me to think carefully about matching the workflow to how operators already think about sending messages. If I were to iterate, I would test whether users need more guidance at the topic selection stage, where the range of categories could feel overwhelming.