Introduction

The AMS Muaythai at UBC is a martial arts and fitness club that I founded in November 2022. We rapidly gained popularity, but we were also aware of multiple shortcomings we struggled with in the semester. It was pretty hard to distribute news and information about our club (for example, when our classes are hosted and how to get involved), and we wanted a universal source of our club. The idea was to develop a website that addresses issues we faced while making a page that brings all Muaythai fans together.

This was a personal project I made when I first wanted to break into tech, and was great for two things:

1. I learned about the full product lifecycle from thinking of an idea, drafting up wireframes, to deploying and maintaining the website. Obviously very high level, but I think it was awesome how I was able to deploy my first project out to the public.
2. It had a great impact on our club, and showed me how useful tech can be – never would I have thought a simple website for a club would be so impactful in streamlining membership process and informing members. This is a super basic project, but being able to connect Muay Thai to technology was pretty mind blowing thing for me

Surveying Our Users

I had the initial idea of creating a website after my first year of running the club as a personal project that could be deployed to the public, but I thought it’d be a good idea to conduct some user research to see if there were any problem spaces I could address while creating it. I created a google form and surveyed our membership base, and made the following pain points:

1. Intimidation/Lack of Knowledge. As a martial arts sport, Muaythai can come off as intimidating, especially to those completely new to the sport. Many members were very hesitant to come to their first classes due to their lack of knowledge and general anxiousness regarding the sport.
2. Communication. As a new club, we found it difficult to spread news and information among the community, let alone promote ourselves. Members said they were often confused about when/where classes took place, what equipment they needed to bring, where to sign waivers, etc. This was a large barrier that we felt sometimes divided us from our members.
3. Community. Fostering a supportive and strong community is our main goal as a club, and a main reason many members come to our classes – they believed our club would be a good way to meet friends. While we felt like we did a good job of achieving this goal, our team is always on the lookout for more ways to promote community.

This inspired some ideas, such as a Call to Action that would instantly direct users to our membership information as there seemed to be a pretty strong disconnect amongst our users about how much memberships are and how they can join to be a member.

Designing and Building

I made a fairly simple low-fidelity wireframe, and used colors that aligned with our club branding – orange and black. I made the following design choices:

• Minimal and simple design helps users focus on what's most important
• Use orange and black as primary colours to match club theme – also to address red-green & yellow-blue colour blindness
• Rounded shapes for a more friendly aesthetic