Mobile App Design and
Development for Tailgait
- Tailgait
- Sports & Fan Engagement
- Mobile App Design & Development
- 1 UI Designer & Developer
- 2 Months
About
On match days, Buffalo Bills fans had trouble finding tents, food trucks, parking spots, and restrooms around Highmark Stadium. A passionate fan came up with an idea of a real-time, interactive mobile application, Tailgait, to help fellow fans locate those amenities. The app also allows fans to list their services or facilities, thus making it a community-driven platform, active only match days.
Goal
The project focused on delivering a seamless match-day experience by helping fans navigate the stadium quickly and effortlessly through an intuitive interactive platform. It enabled easy discovery of facilities and vendors, supported real-time updates via an admin system, and prioritised speed, accessibility, and clear visuals to help users make fast decisions in crowded, high-attention environments.
Challenges
Designing the platform that would handle match-day frenzy presented some unique challenges. The map should load fast, and the fans and vendors wanted a frictionless experience in a time-sensitive environment.
Event-Based Usage Peaks
The app is primarily used during Buffalo Bills match days, requiring the system to handle sudden spikes in traffic while maintaining fast load speeds and map refresh rates.
Dual User Journeys
Designing a single platform that serves both fans navigating amenities and vendors managing listings without overwhelming either group.
Real-Time Stadium Navigation
Fans need to quickly locate restrooms, parking, food courts, and merchandise, which requires accurate and constantly updated map data.
Information Prioritization
High-demand amenities like parking, restrooms, and food needed to be surfaced first based on fan behavior during peak match hours.
Scalable Admin Moderation
The platform required a backend system capable of approving vendor submissions, managing categories, controlling listings, and monitoring live updates.
Low-Attention User Environment
Fans interact with the app in crowded, high-energy environments, making minimal taps, clear icons, and quick readability essential.
Understanding User Behaviour
Through research, we analyzed how fans navigate the stadium on match days, identifying that their top priorities are parking, restrooms, and food courts, followed by tailgating areas and merchandise shops. These insights shaped the visual hierarchy of the interactive map to surface high-demand amenities first, while also accounting for vendors’ need for real-time visibility. The result was a simple, intuitive platform capable of handling live data without overwhelming either fans or vendors.
Define
Based on research and challenge analysis, we defined the core problem as designing a high-performance, real-time stadium navigation platform that works reliably in fast-paced match-day environments. The product needed to support two distinct user groups — fans navigating amenities and vendors managing listings — without increasing friction or cognitive load.
- Peak-Load Performance
The platform had to remain fast, stable, and responsive during high-traffic match-day windows. - Two Clear User Journeys
Support both fans (navigation) and vendors (listing management) without creating friction. - Priority-First Navigation
Surface high-demand amenities like parking, restrooms, and food first, with minimal taps and low cognitive load. - Vendor & Admin Control
Enable simple vendor onboarding and a scalable admin system to manage approvals, categories, listings, and live data accuracy. - Core Principle
Keep the experience simple, real-time, and reliable in a high-energy stadium environment.
Design Highlights
Tailgait is designed to bring clarity, performance, and user-centric interaction during the peak hours of match day. To achieve this, we built
- An interactive map to display key amenities- tailgates, food trucks, restrooms, parking, and merchandise — in one place.
- To help fans find these amenities quickly, the map contains clear icons, clean typography, and clean visual hierarchy.
- We introduced a dual onboarding flow for vendors and fans, optimized for minimal taps.
- On the backend, admin panel UI offers clean controls for admins.
The redesigned Tailgait platform transforms match days into a seamless, organised experience, showcasing real-time amenities and empowering fans and vendors to engage effortlessly.
Final Product Showcase
Conclusion
Tailgait is an active, continuously evolving platform. New match-day features and vendor tools are being refined using real-time data to improve performance during peak times. The design system is expanding to support future modules like analytics and event insights, all aimed at delivering a more organised, connected, and engaging game-day experience for fans, vendors, and the Buffalo Bills community.
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