← All Work Case Study

St. Louis City SC

Registration redesign that gets fans to their tickets faster, while building strategic context for what's next.

Product Design Registration Flow Mobile App July 2026

[TBD]

Time Saved

Awaiting metrics from Aaron

[TBD]

Completion Rate

Awaiting metrics from Aaron

The Problem

Fans arriving at the stadium without the CITY app installed faced a registration flow that asked them to slow down when they needed to move fast.

The old registration was long. Too many steps, too much friction, and it lived in the wrong context. Fans at the stadium aren't thinking about creating a profile. They're thinking about getting to their tickets, getting to concessions, getting to their seats. When they didn't have the app pre-loaded, that registration gauntlet became a chokepoint.

I knew this moment intimately. I was at the STL City SC fan store, trying to add a credit card to pay for a hoodie. I wanted nothing more than to move through that transaction fast and not hold up the line behind me. I'm certain every fan at the stadium felt the same urgency: just let me get to the thing I came here for. The registration flow didn't respect that reality.

How might we... Get fans to their tickets and tickets without forcing them to complete a full profile when they're in a rush?

The Process

Understanding the Constraint

Aaron noticed the pattern at games. Fans without the app pre-installed hit registration and got stuck. They wanted to get to their tickets, but the flow was asking for things that didn't matter in that moment. The old registration collected everything upfront because it could, not because fans needed it to get to what mattered. That's a constraint disguised as completeness.

Execution and Options

I came in mid-project to push this to launch. I worked with Aaron to map the essential path: what does a fan actually need to collect a ticket? From there, I designed multiple flow options for Aaron to review. The key decision came early: make interests and favorite player optional. Fans in a rush could skip them entirely. Fans with time could fill them in. And crucially, they could add both later when they had breathing room.

Launch as Foundation

This wasn't just a flow optimization. Underneath, Aaron was building strategic infrastructure. By collecting interests and favorite player upfront (for those who have time), we're creating context that flows downstream into personalization, into Ace (our AI assistant), into the design system itself. This redesign ships with the brand refresh in July 2026, but its real value is in what it enables next.

Findings

Skip Events Follow Context, Not Preference

Most fans fill out interests and favorite player when given the option. But in high-friction moments (stadium, line, time pressure), skip events become popular. The choice to make these optional wasn't about users not wanting to share. It was about respecting the moment. Give people a fast path when they need it, and they'll come back to enrich their profile later.

Asynchronous Context Collection Works

Fans can now add interests and favorite player after registration, and they do. This matters because it splits the cognitive load. In the stadium moment, you're racing to tickets. Later, when you're browsing the app at home, you can tell it about yourself. The system benefits from the data. The fan benefits from the speed. No compromise required.

Strategic Context Compounds

Early in the user journey, small decisions echo loudly later. The interests and player data we collect (when fans have time to give it) doesn't just personalize the onboarding. It feeds Ace, it shapes what content surfaces in the app, it informs the design system. Without this foundation, we'd be building personalization blind.

"In live, event-driven environments, small decisions early in the user journey tend to echo loudly later."

Aaron Brewer, Senior PM, STL City SC

The Solution

[ minimal path to ticket ]

[ interests step (optional) ]

[ favorite player step (optional) ]

A minimal fast path to tickets, with optional context collection for fans who have time to share.

The redesigned registration strips down to essentials: get fans authenticated, get them to their tickets, get them moving. For fans in a rush (stadium, line, no time), skip events let them bypass interests and favorite player entirely. They land in the app with full access.

For fans who do have time, those optional steps appear but don't gate anything. Fill them out, and you're feeding the system with data that shapes personalization later. Skip them, and you're not blocked. That choice respects both use cases: the rush and the engagement.

Design Decision

Make context collection optional, not required. The immediate goal is getting fans to their tickets. The strategic goal is building foundation for what's next. Both matter, but they don't have to conflict. Optionality lets you serve both at once.

Impact

[TBD]

Time to Ticket

Reduced from old flow

[TBD]

Completion Rate

New flow metrics

Learnings

Execution can carry strategy

I came into this project mid-stream with a specific role: push it to finish line. But that "all hands on deck" execution work wasn't separate from strategy. The decision to make interests and player optional, the choice to enable asynchronous profile enrichment, the willingness to respect when fans need speed over completeness—those were design moves that carried Aaron's strategic vision forward. You don't have to lead a project from day one to shape what it becomes. Sometimes the best thinking happens in the final push.

Lived experience compounds leverage

Aaron felt this problem at games. I felt it at the merch line. Neither of us was running the project, but that shared lived experience guided every decision. When I was designing the skip events, I wasn't designing from theory. I was designing from memory of standing in that line, wanting to move, not wanting to slow down the people behind me. That's what made the optional path feel right instead of like a compromise. Small decisions in user journeys echo loudly later. But so do the moments that shaped how you think about those decisions.

St. Louis City SC

The Problem

The Process

Understanding the Constraint

Execution and Options

Launch as Foundation

Findings

Skip Events Follow Context, Not Preference

Asynchronous Context Collection Works

Strategic Context Compounds

The Solution

Impact

Learnings

Execution can carry strategy

Lived experience compounds leverage

More Work

MBTA

Curology

Cultural Care Au Pair