Ugly Pickle

Illustration of a broken jar with green liquid spilling out and a yellow ball with orange circles inside the liquid.

Board Game Creator

Overview

Ugly Pickle is a high-intensity tabletop game built to capture the pace, pressure, and decision-making of pickleball. I led the product from concept through iterative playtests and live companion app releases. I owned product direction, rules and onboarding, system design across physical and digital surfaces, and the technical execution required to keep it consistent and production-ready.

Colorful Ugly Pickle board game setup with game board, character pieces, cards, and a smartphone showing game controls on an orange background.

My Contributions

Product vision, gameplay goals, and player experience
Rules, onboarding flow, and clarity-first instructional structure
Component design, layout systems, and production-ready specs
Companion apps for iOS and Android that are currently live Web design for discovery and conversion
Structured playtesting research
3D modeling and animation in Blender for prototypes and marketing assets
Meta ad creative and iteration
Coordinated custom ATmega328P PCB prototype with Arduino code + integration planning

Clarity, feedback, and momentum

Reduce cognitive load by simplifying decisions and making state changes obvious.
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Design for fast comprehension with consistent visuals, labels, and layout rules.
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Provide immediate feedback in both the physical game and companion apps.
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Treat rules and onboarding like a product funnel, not a wall of text.

Iterate using observed confusion, not personal preference.

Four colorful cards depicting cartoon characters playing pickleball with directional arrows and grid icons on each card.

Illustration of two players playing pickleball indoors with animated audience and a mascot in the background.

One system, many surfaces

To keep the experience cohesive, I approached Ugly Pickle as a design system that spans physical components, UI patterns, and brand execution.
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Defined reusable patterns for hierarchy, states, and player feedback
Built a shared visual language so the board, app UI, and ads all “speak” the same way.
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Designed for scalability, so new modes and components could be added without redesigning the foundation.

Mobile game start screen with score 0-0 and purple buttons labeled Start!, Rules, and Mailing List on a blue background with tennis player icons.

Mobile screen displaying pickleball game modes: Rally mode for casual play with timer reset each return, and Countdown mode with fixed game time for each team, plus a Back button.

Colorful game interface with numeric controls, pause and settings icons, and a large teal button labeled 'RETURN BALL' at the bottom.

Playtests as UX testing, not just game feedback

I ran and documented playtest sessions with a UX mindset, focusing on comprehension, friction points, and decision flow.
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Observed where players hesitated, misread state, or asked repeated questions.
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Iterated on rules, component clarity, and app interactions based on patterns across sessions.
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Validated onboarding improvements by measuring how quickly new players could start correctly without intervention.
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Used playtest insights to prioritize what to simplify versus what to deepen.

Group of six young adults playing a board game and laughing around a table indoors.

Technical execution

Built and shipped the companion apps for iOS and Android, aligning interaction patterns with the physical gameplay loop.
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Designed and developed supporting web experiences to communicate the product quickly.
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Coordinated a hardware prototype track for an ATmega328P-based custom PCB and custom Arduino code, ensuring the technical direction supported the intended user experience.

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I treated the board and the app as one system, defining shared rules for states, transitions, and feedback so the physical components and digital UI stay consistent as the game scales.

Outcomes to highlight

Multiple playtest cycles completed with iterative improvements to onboarding and clarity.
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Physical prototypes produced through 3D modeling and 3D printing for rapid iteration.
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End-to-end system built across product, software, marketing, and hardware exploration.

Ugly Pickle is an end-to-end product that I took from concept to real use. I designed the gameplay and onboarding for fast comprehension, built a system that stays consistent across physical components, companion apps, and marketing, and validated decisions through repeated playtests focused on where players hesitated, misread state, or got stuck. The companion apps are live on iOS and Android, and the physical game has gone through multiple prototype cycles using 3D modeling and printing to iterate quickly.
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Black and white circular gear icon with four double-spoked wheels and a center block with dots.

Black and white outline of an African elephant facing left with its trunk raised.

Green trophy with a perforated sphere on top casting a shadow on an orange background.

Cartoon-style scoreboard with numbers 1 to 5 in blue circles on the left, a central gray panel with number 5 and laurel leaves, and numbers 4 to 1 in brown circles on the right against an orange background.

Red circular pressure gauge icon casting a shadow on a red-orange background.

A white pickleball net stretched horizontally against a solid orange background.

Gameboard on a green background featuring two symmetrical orange courts separated by a net, numbered blue and white markers, four ernie boxes, odd and even sections, and a central Pressure-O-Meter with steam.

Ten colorful illustrated playing cards showing diverse cartoon characters in action poses, with a stack of cards labeled 'Ugly Pickle' on an orange background.

Nine colorful plastic player tokens holding different sports equipment on orange background, including white figures with tennis racquets, blue figures with pickleball paddles, yellow figures with frying pans, and red figures with shovels.

Smartphone on an orange surface displaying a colorful timer app with controls for adjusting time and a pause button.

Four animated people playing pickleball on an outdoor court with paddles and a ball, under a blue sky with clouds.

Mobile to BRONGA

UX DESIGN

DESIGN SYSTEM

ANIMATION

Evolved from mobile UX design to overseeing the (BRONGA) Stitch design systems for the Gap inc. portfolio.

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