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The best user experience is often the one you barely notice. When you are running your studio or preparing to teach a class, your software should help you get things done without demanding extra time or attention. That leaves you free to focus on what matters most: creating a better experience for your members.
That idea is behind one of the biggest changes we have made to bsport. We are rebuilding the back office, starting with a clearer, simpler way to find the tools you need.
Angela Pesta leads UX and design at bsport. She was the first designer on the AWS team and part of the founding team behind the Amazon Kindle. She has since led design at Tesco, eDreams, Xing, New Relic, Elastic and GitLab.
We asked Angela why bsport is rebuilding the back office, what customers will notice and where the experience is heading next.
“Working at Amazon taught me a lot about customer centricity. Every product transformation I've led is guided by the core principle of applying a deep understanding of customers. It is through this understanding that we’re able to make confident and directed decisions that result in true customer satisfaction.”
Why rebuild the back office, and why now?
Angela: The project started with listening. We gather feedback directly inside the product, and we hear more through our sales and support teams. Being new to the company, one of the first things I did was look at our biggest pain points and what our customers were saying.
From there, we started looking at how we could solve those pain points and create an experience that is intuitive, efficient and delightful.
You talk about a “high quality experience”. How do you make sure that is more than a nice idea?
Angela: We established a design quality framework and built a custom design system, to assure a consistently good experience.
Every page we revamp goes through a rigorous evaluation and scoring exercise. If it does not meet our thresholds, we revise it until it does. Then we verify the success of the changes with actual users via interviews and usability testing.
Six quality pillars guide the work.
It works reliably
Pages should behave predictably and safely. The product should perform well and feel smooth to use.
It explains itself
The interface itself should act as the instruction manual. You should not need a tutorial or a support call to understand how to use it.
“A product is designed well when it is intuitive. Often, that is how you know you are experiencing good design. You do not even realize you are experiencing it because it recedes into the background. The best design is often invisible.”
It asks less of you
We want to make sure customers do not have to use a lot of mental effort to complete their tasks.
Our customers are already busy with the day-to-day running of their studios. We should only show what is needed for that person in that moment, cutting clutter and complexity to make the experience simple and intuitive.
It removes friction from your workflows
There should be no hunting for where something lives and no wondering what to do next. Completing multi-stepped tasks should feel streamlined and easy.
It feels modern
We want bsport to look modern, coherent and visually compelling, down to details such as typography, spacing, buttons and color. That is why we have built a custom design system.
It is built for what comes next
We are structuring the product today with automation in mind, so artificial intelligence can be introduced over time.
What is the first thing customers will notice?
Angela: The single biggest change is the new navigation.
We have thought carefully about how all our information is structured, how we can consolidate it and how we name things.
This was not something we decided on a whiteboard. We ran card sorts, tree tests and usability studies. We asked real customers to find real things, and then we iterated, as a good UX team should.
We reached a point where we felt confident that this was the most usable navigation system for the product.
At a glance, the back office should feel cleaner and more obvious. It has a more modern wrapper, less clutter, a clear search bar and pages such as settings reorganized so customers can find what they came for.
Some of this will roll out gradually over the coming months, with search and other elements becoming richer over time.
Why does navigation matter so much?
Angela: We place a lot of importance on efficiency. People are trying to get work done.
A key principle for us is asking whether we can help them do that in a way that is intuitive and efficient.
We want to get people to the outcome as quickly as possible and with as little friction as possible.
Customers should not have to hunt for where something lives or wonder what to do next. The experience itself should guide them.
The interface should act as the instruction manual. You should not need a tutorial or a support call to find your way around.
What makes this different from other tools studio owners may have used?
Angela: Most software products are designed and developed within organizational silos.
You have teams that work on only one part of a product. That structure does not always map naturally to how customers think or work, and it can create friction for the user.
There is a term for this called Conway’s Law, which describes what happens when a product reflects the organizational structure of the company that built it.
That is often what makes products difficult to use. They have not been thoughtfully designed around how users think about the jobs they need to do.
That is where we want to differentiate bsport.
We became very specific about who bsport is for with the definition of user personas: the owner, the studio manager, the teacher and the member. We looked at what each of them is actually trying to get done.
From there, we mapped the user journeys, including the emotional highs, the points of frustration and the moments when we can genuinely deliver value.
“It is really rare to find a product that is truly optimized for the user’s journey and meaningful outcomes. That comes from a deep understanding of user needs, motivations, and behaviours.”
I talk about being intuitive and efficient, but the cherry on top is asking whether the experience can also be delightful.
That is the moment when someone completes a task and realizes the value of bsport: “Wow, that was easier than I expected.”
We want that experience for our customers.
Can you give a concrete example?
Angela: Two areas show the new thinking clearly.
Booking management is one.
Instead of hunting across multiple views to understand what is happening, studio managers can see classes, appointments and series within one calendar, with fill rates visible at a glance.
When they open a class, everything they need to take action is there, including the roster, attendance confirmation, no-show penalties and contact details.
It means less clicking, faster decisions and a back office that more closely matches how studios run their day-to-day operations.
The marketing suite is another example.
Segmenting clients, sending campaigns and setting up automations have their own dedicated space. Campaigns can be built and sent without leaving the flow, and automations have their own overview, so customers can see what is running and how it is performing.
During testing, studio managers told us that it felt very user-friendly and could have a significant positive impact on their day-to-day work. That's exactly the bar we set for the revamp.
What should studio owners notice and feel when they see the new back office?
Angela: I hope they feel inspired. With the clean and structured UI, they should feel more focused and at ease when it comes to getting things done.
If they’re trying out the new back office for the first time, I hope their immediate reaction is: “I need this product. Sign me up. This is much better than what I have seen or used before.”
For people who have used other tools, the difference should be clear and obvious at a glance.
I would expect them to notice immediately that it feels modern and thoughtfully designed. Then, once they move beyond the surface, they should see that we have been thoughtful about guiding them along various steps of their journey so they can feel confident and well-supported.
The navigation is the biggest change they will see at first glance. We have done a lot of research to develop this new structure, so it should immediately feel simpler and more obvious where you need to go to do things.
The experience should show that bsport is high quality, modern and genuinely focused on the user.
“Hopefully it comes through from the first interaction: ‘You are really thinking about your customer here.’ It should feel modern, user-centric, thoughtfully designed and easy to use.”
Is this simply a visual redesign?
Angela: No. The rebuild is a foundation, not a finish line.
The visual experience is part of the work, but we’re also creating a more usable and consistent bsport experience, across our back office and the member app. We’re applying a global product mindset with clear quality standards that assure the overall bsport experience feels unified and smooth.
Our custom design system, called Kaizen (in Japanese it means "continuous improvement" or "change for the better"), gives us a rock solid foundation. It assures precision, flexibility, and consistency that is highly sustainable.
We are also structuring what we build today with the future in mind, including how automation and artificial intelligence could support customers over time.
Where is this all heading?
Angela: The plan is to continue rolling out revamped portions of our back office, until every page and every workflow has been refined. The back office release is a progressive one. Customers can learn about what’s new and what’s coming on the ‘What’s New’ page. We’re taking this phased approach because we feel it is important to co-create with our customers, to gather their feedback along the way and assure that what we are delivering is truly aligned to their needs. We have a feedback link on the website that we will actively be reviewing.
After revamping our entire back office the work does not stop. We will continuously improve the back office, working hard to maintain our customers’ trust in bsport. We will apply best practices in service design, which is to say, we will continue to leverage the personas and user journeys to further refine, unify, and make the bsport value felt at every touchpoint, whether that’s in our back office, the mobile app, or when directly interacting with our staff.
Our mission as a user experience team is to deliver high-quality, AI-augmented, user-centered experiences, freeing studios from operational friction, accelerating their growth, and creating more space for meaningful human connection.
It’s an exciting time to be designing in the health and wellness SaaS space, there is so much that we can and plan to do to help studios generate revenue and to ease their operational burden. But more about that in a future interview!
What difference do you want this to make for studio owners?
Angela: The product is a vehicle for delivering our brand value, and we want to be a partner to our studio clients.
That means having a real connection with our customers’ needs, satisfying those needs and providing an experience that feels easy and, where possible, delightful.
Over time, we want to help our customers become better at their jobs and ultimately deliver better experiences to their own members.
“It is about understanding what value means to our customers and making sure their experience with bsport honors that. We want to deliver it in a way that feels unexpected: ‘I did not expect it to be that easy.’ ‘That was much more pain-free than I anticipated.’ ‘I did not know you could do that with this product.’ Those little ‘aha’ moments are our aim.”
We want customers to continuously think: “That is why I chose bsport. That is why I continue to choose bsport.”
The goal is to create an experience that people really love, feel excited about and want to share with their colleagues and friends.
We’re making bsport easier to use
The new navigation is only the beginning.
The new back office will roll out progressively over the coming months, with further improvements designed to make bsport more intuitive, efficient and useful for studio teams.
Because the less time you spend working out your software, the more time you can spend creating value for your members.
See the new back office for yourself.
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