Performance Playbook: Carlisle United FC

Translating psychological frameworks into a 40-page interactive learning experience for junior academy players.

Role

UX & Information Designer

Industry

Sports / Youth Development

Duration

4 weeks

The Challenge: Bridging the Gap Between Expertise and Engagement

The Player Care Lead at Carlisle United FC provided a comprehensive body of work based on her educational and professional experience. It was rich in academic theory and psychological frameworks, but it existed as a dense, text-heavy document. My challenge was to transform this raw expertise into a 40-page interactive "Playbook" that young athletes would find intuitive, engaging, and easy to navigate.

Partnering with the Subject Matter Expert

Working closely with the Player Care Lead, I acted as the bridge between her expert knowledge and the players’ needs. I refined and tweaked the copy where necessary to ensure clarity, but my primary focus was on Information Design: taking tables and psychological prompts and giving them a professional and structured format.

Designing for Action: Reflection as an Interaction

To move the book from a passive "read" to an active "tool," I introduced a system of visual cues. I strategically emphasised action-oriented prompts such as "Reflect," "Discuss," "Revisit," and "Think." These acted as the "buttons" of the playbook - explicit calls-to-action that guided the players on how to engage with the content at specific moments, ensuring the psychological exercises were practised, not just read.

Architecting the Physical Experience

I was responsible for the end-to-end structural design of the document. This included:

Visualising Theory: Taking dense academic concepts and transforming them into visually appealing diagrams that reduce cognitive load.
System Design: Developing a consistent layout, including a functional index and properly spaced tables that accounted for the physical constraints of handwriting.
Accessibility: Ensuring that margins, line spacing for answers, and font hierarchies made the document approachable for young users who might be completing these tasks in high-pressure training environments.

Establishing a Professional Aesthetic

To ensure the book felt like an official part of the Carlisle United FC journey, I designed the front and back covers from scratch. I balanced the club’s traditional branding with a modern, "Elite Performance" aesthetic, signalling to the junior players that this mindset work is as essential to their development as their physical kit. The final 40-page book was sent to the client after iterative feedback sessions with the Player Care Lead.

Reflections

This project reinforced my belief that great design is often about simplification without loss of meaning. My value was not in creating the raw content, but in architecting a system that made complex psychological frameworks accessible and 'playable' for a younger audience.

It also served as a deep dive into high-fidelity visual design. By leaning into visual hierarchy and the strategic use of negative space, I saw firsthand how allowing elements to 'breathe' directly impacts a user’s ability to process information. Most importantly, this project challenged my assumptions about the medium; I realised that UX principles are not confined to screens. Whether digital or physical, the core of the work remains the same: managing cognitive load and designing for the user’s mental model.