Mapping how coaches track young people’s progress

Empire Fighting Chance supports young people facing difficult circumstances through boxing, mentoring and therapy. Their programmes create a safe, trusted environment where young people can build confidence, improve their wellbeing and make positive changes to their lives.

The challenge

Coaches were working in a fast-paced gym environment. Recording information about the young people was inconsistent and time-consuming, and often left until after sessions. This made it harder to build a clear picture of progress over time.

UX work

I worked with stakeholders, programme leads and Empire’s digital partner Blu Inc to map how progress is tracked during and after sessions, and where it breaks down. This focused on a number of key journeys around capturing and reviewing progress.

We looked at:

• What coaches needed to record
  
• When and where this happened
  
• Where things were missed or delayed
  
• How information was used later by staff
  

This made a few things clear:

Recording data during sessions needed to be quick and low effort as any friction meant it simply wouldn’t happen. Empire also needed a consistent and really simple way to view each participant’s progress over time in a dashboard.

What changed

We were able to simplify the tracking process and focus on what mattered most.

• Reduced the number of steps needed to log information
  
• Prioritised the most important data points
  
• Designed around real gym conditions, not ideal scenarios
  
• Created a clearer flow from coach input to staff insight
  

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Outcome

Coaches can now record progress quickly during sessions and staff have a clearer, more consistent view of each young person’s journey over time.

This makes it easier for Empire Fighting Chance to understand their impact and better support each person on their programme.

This work informed the design of a simple progressive web app and dashboard (Empire Tracker), turning these journeys into a practical tool used by the team.

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