Driving App Growth for SportSmart Charity

The Insight Challenge

Podium Analytics' SportSmart app — a free injury management tool for schools and clubs — was seeing lower-than-expected engagement. They needed research to understand what drives and prevents adoption among PE teachers and coaches, and to prioritise the right features and messaging to boost long-term usage.

The project we crafted

A three-phase mixed-methods programme to uncover what schools and clubs need from a sports injury platform — and how to make SportSmart essential to their practice.

  • Desk research and immersion — reviewing the SportSmart app, UX, existing usage data and injury insights from the FA and LTA.

  • An online Insight Community with 32 PE teachers and grassroots coaches, using Jobs to be Done and Switching Forces frameworks to uncover needs, drivers and barriers to use, and ideal feature and experience.

  • A 15-minute quantitative survey with sports coaches and teachers, including a needs prioritisation exercise and proposition testing.

Outcomes

Audience personas, empathy maps and JTBD frameworks giving Podium Analytics a clear picture of what coaches and PE teachers truly need from an injury management tool.

Prioritised feature roadmap and messaging strategy to sharpen SportSmart's value proposition and boost adoption.

“The quality of the research you’ve delivered have really helped demonstrate the importance and relevance of market research to the whole team. The insights you’ve shared provide a crucial jumping-off point for how we’ll develop SportSmart going forward, which I am very excited to keep building on! ”

Head of Marketing, Podium Analytics (SportSmart)