Video library feature redesign for a sports coaching platform
Overview
Famer is a sports coaching platform connecting athletes, coaches, and clubs through personalized training programs and interactive feedback.
I was the sole designer on this feature — working with a PM, QA, and developers to redesign the video library: upload flow, visibility logic, and filtering system.
PROBLEM
The system was designed for one video at a time. COVID changed that overnight — clubs moved online, coaches needed to upload dozens of drills a week, and a system built for single uploads with no visibility logic couldn't keep up.
- Admins couldn't tell who would see a video after upload
- With no custom thumbnail, every drill card looked the same — no way to tell them apart
- Live sessions and drill videos lived in the same space — no structure to separate them
- With dozens of new videos a week, there was no way to find anything
The Process
Before screens, requirements
I wrote the full product requirements with the PM: visibility states, coach permissions, and content types. COVID accelerated the problem: clubs moved online overnight, coaches were uploading dozens of drills a week, and the system had no structure to support it. Working with PM, QA, and developers, I mapped the full admin experience before designing anything.
Defined the feature logic
I mapped the full requirements for the library - including visibility states, coach permissions, and content types.
The Users
The Approach
Three visibility states, not a toggle
A toggle works for two states. Here there were three distinct permission levels — all athletes, after assignment, or hidden. A binary on/off would have forced admins to use workarounds for every non-standard case.
Custom thumbnail as a findability tool
Coaches needed a way to make drills recognizable at a glance — especially when titles alone don't distinguish between similar sessions.
Tags and categories together
Search alone doesn't scale. Tags handle specifics, categories handle browsing — both serve different moments in the admin's workflow.
The Design
Dozens of drills with the same default thumbnail — no way to tell them apart. Admins choose a frame from the filmstrip directly in the upload flow, making each card visually distinct.
All drill details are set during upload — visibility, sport, category, coach, tags, and thumbnail. No second step, no going back to edit after the fact.
After upload, admins can change a drill's visibility directly from the library — without opening it. The eye-off overlay makes hidden drills immediately visible in the grid.
Live recordings have their own structure — coach, participants, date, and view mode (Speaker / Gallery). Separating them from drills .gave clubs running weekly remote sessions a dedicated home in the system.
IMPACT
Uploading a batch of drill videos and controlling who could see each one required multiple steps with no clear logic. After — admins could upload dozens of drills in one flow and define access permissions immediately: which coaches can assign, which athletes can view, and which content stays hidden.
WHAT I LEARNED
Looking back, I would handle visibility differently. Instead of a toggle or button next to each drill, I'd separate the library at the page level — a clear split between what's visible and what isn't. A per-item control works when the library is small. At scale, the cognitive load adds up fast.
I'd also replace the single upload form with a step-by-step flow — one decision at a time instead of all settings at once. When admins are uploading dozens of videos, a long form creates friction at exactly the wrong moment.
