NHBT APP
Designed and developed in direct collaboration with our team of student developers, the National Hillel Basketball Tournament's 2025 app delivered a revolutionary fan and player experience for users. By considering the needs of all users, this app enabled comprehensive access to each part of the weekend – from games to events.
Previous issues: Past renditions of the NHBT app lacked features like guest passes, play-by-play updates, and a brand-consisted interface. Additionally, issues with user navigation led to several complaints about a lack of accessibility for both fans, players, and scorekeepers. Lastly, there had not been a database in place to automate systems for fan and player check-in for games and events.
New approaches: We viewed this app from the perspective of all three potential users; players, fans, and scorekeepers. This helped us remain far more organized in developing the user flow and overall functionality of the app. Additionally, professionalism and brand-consistency became a major point of emphasis as past renditions appeared far more unprofessional.
New features:
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Fan and player passes, which eliminated the need for manual admission systems
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Favorite teams widget, which provides immediate updates to the user's teams of interest
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Upgraded statistics, enabled by a consolidated stat-keeping system
USER FLOW MAP
HOMEPAGE
The homepage allows tournament participants to digest plenty of information that is most vital to them. This includes the brand-new fan pass to access events, current schedule, and updates for their favorite teams. In past years, this information was more dispersed and difficult to find, so consolidating it into one page was a priority.
HOMEPAGE (CONT.)
By selecting any of the 60 teams that attended NHBT 2025, participants are able to get a glance into their favorite teams' performances both on a team-level and individual level. Our technology team leveraged an immense database of statistics and team records to display team updates instantaneously.
GAMES PAGE
This is the most complex page of the application as the app sorts out a slew of hundreds of games in a digestible manner. Noticeably, the user's favorite teams' games are displayed first, while all current and upcoming games are listed below. Additionally, since each tournament game is decided after the preliminary games have been completed, this page has to remain as organized as possible.
GAME CAST
Each game is updated in real-time by volunteer stat-takers, all of whom input various statistics for each team and their players. Each game has a unique game cast page which displayed both a play-by-play sequence and a box score showing each player's points, rebounds, assists, and fouls in that game.
RANKINGS PAGE
By using a system that considers record, aggregated points, and strength of schedule, each team is assigned a ranking for both the men's and women's fields. This allows users to see rankings adjust in real-time based on game results. These rankings also directly inform the tournament's brackets, which were set after preliminary competition was completed.
TEAM PAGE
Each of the 60 participating teams at NHBT 2025 has their own team page which highlights their team stats, ranking, record, and games. Additionally, the roster section allows users to access information about each individual player.
PLAYER PAGE
Each player's information (both important and less-important) is featured on their unique player page. Users can view each player's stats and personal information should they choose to publish it. This helped make the players more competitive throughout the tournament as they strived to win games and fill their stat sheet.
STATS PAGE
Players who excelled in specific categories (points, assists, and rebounds) are featured on the stats page, giving credit to those who most deserve it.