Greenhouse Connect

My Role: Creative Lead + Product design
Client: Greenhouse Sports 
Collaborators: Big Lemon (Project management & Build)

Greenhouse Sports is a charity that supports young people from disadvantaged communities through sport and mentoring. Their full-time coach-mentors work within schools to build confidence, strengthen life skills and improve wellbeing and engagement – helping students feel empowered to reach their potential.

As Creative Lead, I led a small team of designers and collaborated closely with Big Lemon, to ensure a cohesive creative vision across the platform. From establishing the component library to designing the participant experience and supporting the build through snag testing, my focus was on delivering a consistent, intuitive, and inspiring product ecosystem that captured the spirit and impact of Greenhouse Sports.

By the end of the project, Greenhouse Sports had a cohesive digital ecosystem which was capable of:

• Capturing and reporting on young people’s development across multiple programmes

• Streamlining communication between coaches, parents, and administrators

• Providing tangible, data-driven evidence of impact to funders and schools

The Impact Portal (AKA Greenhouse Connect) now forms a core part of Greenhouse Sports’ operational and storytelling strategy – helping them measure, demonstrate, and amplify their mission to change lives through sport.

Designing for 4 interconnected user groups – each with distinct needs and technical environments, posed several challenges:

• Maintaining consistency across web and mobile platforms for 4 different portals (Coaches, Parents, Young People and Admins).

• Balancing data capture with human storytelling – ensuring the experience didn’t feel like a reporting tool, but a space to celebrate growth and connection.

• Creating clarity out of complexity, with user journeys that ranged from quick consent approvals to in-depth progress tracking.

• Ensuring accessibility and ease of use, particularly for coaches and young people engaging with the platform in fast-paced or time-limited environments.

A connected impact portal ecosystem of 4 applications designed around real-world user contexts:

• Coaches App (iOS + Web): To log updates, track progress, and capture personal stories from young people.

• Parents App (iOS + Android): To view session details and manage digital consent forms.

• Young People’s App (iOS + Android + Web): To track journeys, level up, and complete surveys in a motivational and engaging way.

• Admin Portal (Web): For Greenhouse HQ to manage data, users, and reporting.

To structure the experience and align the team, we mapped user flows using User Story Epics. This approach helped us understand each user type’s goals and pain points, ensuring functionality served real needs rather than assumptions.

Using the MoSCoW prioritisation method (Must, Should, Could, Won’t), the team aligned early on key objectives, resolved prioritisation conflicts, and focused resources on the highest-impact features. This collaborative approach helped streamline development and ensured that every feature added tangible value to Greenhouse Sports’ mission.

As Creative Lead, I recognised that building a multi-app ecosystem required strong visual governance. I established a design system and shared component library early in the project to ensure visual and functional consistency across all applications. This foundational work was essential in aligning multiple designers and developers around a single creative vision, reducing friction throughout the process, and ensuring that every user, from coaches to young participants, and parents experienced Greenhouse Sports as one unified platform.

This ensured: Consistent visual language across all portals, faster design and development workflows and a cohesive experience for users

Designing for impact measurement is as much about storytelling as it is about data capture.
For the Young People’s Portal, I designed an experience that felt positive, empowering, and game-like, celebrating achievements as well as collecting metrics.

Key features included:

• Progress tracking and “level-up” feedback moments.

• Personal dashboards with clear developmental goals.

• Friendly survey interactions with encouraging microcopy and visual cues.

This project was built on close collaboration between design and development. Working with Big Lemon, I held regular design reviews to validate usability, refine interaction patterns, and ensure the product aligned with Greenhouse’s operational realities.

Designing and prototyping in Figma enabled shared visibility and feedback loops across stakeholders. During the final stages, I conducted snag testing across platforms – identifying visual inconsistencies, missing UI states, and interaction issues before launch.

• Strong visual governance is essential when designing across multiple apps and teams. A single design system maintained coherence and saved development time.

• Impact measurement must feel human. Data capture should empower, not overwhelm with storytelling and motivation at the heart of engagement.

• Early investment in component libraries and snag testing reduced inconsistencies, improved handoff, and ensured quality across platforms.