UX Audit for an AI-Powered Fantasy Platform

Role

UX Auditor & Stategist

Timeline

May 2025 - June 2025

Tools

Figma

Deliverables

UX Audit

YAC Football

Overview

The YAC Football team had powerful analytics but the experience made users hesitate in the moments that mattered. I was brought in just before launch to pressure test the product, highlight the gaps that created uncertainty, and map the improvements that would immediately strengthen clarity and trust. My work gave the team a focused plan that made the launch smoother and the product easier for fantasy football players to utilize and understand.

Quick Summary

YAC Football is an AI powered platform that helps fantasy players make smarter weekly and draft decisions. I joined during the final two weeks before launch, a tight window where engineering time was limited and features were still evolving. Every insight needed to be clear and actionable. This work was not a design overhaul. It was a readiness evaluation. My job was to find friction, identify trust gaps, assess stability, and provide a prioritized plan the founders could execute immediately. The goal was to remove uncertainty and increase the chance of a strong first impression.

My responsibilities included:
• Full UX audit
• Product-level recommendations
• Launch risk assessment
• Prioritized roadmap aligned to engineering reality

The Goal: remove uncertainty and increase the odds of a successful first impression.

The Challenge

YAC had depth and intelligence along with the foundations of a strong analytics product, but the experience did not consistently reflect that strength.

During early walkthroughs, users often paused to interpret what the AI intended or why rankings changed. Even a short hesitation created doubt in moments where confidence mattered. In fantasy sports, doubt breaks trust. Users struggled with overwhelming analytics, unpredictable AI behavior, unclear ranking logic, missing essentials for drafts, inconsistent content quality, and confusing onboarding. The founders needed clarity about what was solid, what was fragile, and what required attention before launch.

Users struggled with:
• Overwhelming analytics
• Unpredictable AI behavior
• Unclear ranking logic
• Missing essentials for live drafts
• Content quality swings
• Confusing onboarding

The founders needed clarity on where the product was strong, where it was fragile, and what changes mattered most before shipping.

My Role & Approach

My work focused on three pillars that matter most in fantasy sports tools. Clarity refers to how quickly a user can understand what the product is communicating. Trust refers to whether the AI behaves in ways that feel predictable and transparent. Draft usability refers to how easily a user can make fast decisions when time is limited.

To evaluate the product accurately, I combined heuristic auditing, scenario based walkthroughs that simulated real draft pressure, competitive analysis against leading fantasy platforms, and stress testing the AI with edge cases. This revealed not only what was failing, but why it failed and how severely it affected the experience.

Strategic Opportunities

Clear opportunity areas emerged across onboarding, trust signals, and the overall analytics and draft experience. Guided introductions, clearer metric definitions, and more transparent ranking explanations would improve clarity. Stronger prompt structures, more predictable AI behavior, and better insight explanations would support long term trust. Improvements to draft flow and a more structured analytics hierarchy would make the product more usable when pressure is high.

Recommendations

To keep execution realistic, the roadmap was divided into immediate improvements, post launch enhancements, and longer term strategic direction. Immediate changes focused on onboarding, AI stability, and essential ranking filters. Post launch work centered on reorganizing analytics, strengthening draft mode, and improving content quality processes. The strategic plan positioned YAC as a clarity focused analytics product built on transparent and reliable AI behavior.

Value Delivered

By the end of the audit, the team had something that had been missing. Certainty. The work revealed exactly where trust was breaking, why analytics felt overwhelming, and how draft mode was falling short. It aligned the founders around a focused plan instead of scattered assumptions. This was not abstract strategy. This was a practical direction the team could act on immediately. They shifted from guessing to making informed decisions that strengthened the product before launch.

Outcome Metrics

Projected improvement after implementing the recommended experience changes:

How These Projections Were Modeled

I benchmarked against friction-reduction patterns from comparable fantasy products, typical drop-off points in analytics-heavy tools, and behavioral trends related to trust-signal improvements. These projections represent realistic shifts based on reduced cognitive load and clearer value communication—not inflated assumptions.

Closing Summary

YAC Football did not need more features. It needed clarity, reliability, and structure. The audit helped refocus the product around delivering confidence during the moments that matter most to fantasy players. This project shows my ability to enter a fast moving environment, cut through ambiguity, and deliver a strategic and evidence based path to launch readiness while aligning founders and strengthening the product’s foundation.

other work.