EDGE
Referee software from 0 to 1: brand, website and product in three months. 230 referees onboarded on the MVP.
Overview
EDGE runs basketball officiating in one place. Federations set up their organisations, competitions and games; assigners staff every game with referees; referees accept games, keep their week up to date and file reports and expenses after the final whistle.
Its founders, Waseem Husainy, a basketball referee himself, and Faheem Dinath, came to me with a product plan and an early demo, but no brand, website or designed product. In three months I designed the first version of everything: the logo and brand, the website and sales slides, the product for referees, assigners and federation admins, and the email flows, working from their customer interviews.
The problem
Officiating runs on spreadsheets, email and phone calls. By Waseem’s estimate, changes take more than half of an assigner’s time: a referee drops out two hours before tip-off, and the calls begin.
How I approached it
I started from the founders’ customer interviews and recordings of assigners at work, and designed for the worst moment, the start of a shift. The assigner’s home opens on what broke and how to reassign it. A referee accepts a game in one click, then files the report and expenses from that game’s panel.
What was hard
Three months, with a developer building from week three. Every screen had to be buildable as drawn, so wherever users wouldn’t feel the difference I chose the cheaper version: an editable table before the costly tree view, one flow for creating and editing, bulk games one day at a time.
The result
A brand, a website and an MVP in three months. 230 referees are onboarded, and the team is building the next modules, from reimbursements to communication.
Our current software is being used and the product-market fit feedback has been amazing!
Results
- Referees onboarded
- 230
- Onboarded on the MVP by September 2026, while the team builds the next modules.
- Brand, website and product
- 0 to 1
- From a product plan to a clickable MVP, November 2025 to January 2026.
- Roles, one product
- 3
- Referees, assigners and federation admins, each with a home of their own.
One designer, every first impression
A new company usually meets its first customers with a logo from one place, a website template from another and screens the developer improvised. At EDGE all of it came from one designer, so the brand, the website and the product tell the same story, and the founders were showing it to federations while it was still being built.
Scope
- Logo, brand and referee posters
- Website and sales slides
- Referee app: invitations, availability, reports and expenses
- Assigner tools: games, crew builder and rejections
- Federation admin: organisations, members and finances
- Email flows and a design system on shadcn/ui