OMP — Sean Valadao Duarte

Sean Valadão Duarte

Sean Valadão Duarte is a Senior Product & Experience Designer based in Lisboa, specialising in clear, scalable digital products across UX research, strategy and systemised UI. Outside of work, he can usually be found watching Arsenal on the weekends, making ambient tunes in the evenings, and practising his questionable Portuguese whenever he can.

Email
Info
LinkedIn

Work

Exceptional ALIEN
Venues NSW
McGrath
Optimize Mind Performance
Novii
Constantinople
Sportsbet
Invocare
Finstro (Coming soon)
Redback (Coming soon)
Powershop (Coming soon)

Optimize Mind Performance

Index

Role: Senior UX/UI Designer
Industry: Sports psychology
Time: 8 weeks
Delivered: App product strategy

Delivering a habit forming mental strength training experience that is adaptive, supportive and personalised to the unique needs of both professional and casual athletes.

Overview
Optimize Mind Performance (OMP) is a mental strength training platform designed to help sports psychologists build and manage tailored programs for their clients. Already partnered with several leading universities and schools across the U.S., the company is currently entering its second round of investment proposals. The platform includes a dedicated athlete app for completing exercises and tasks, alongside a psychologist hub that offers full control and oversight of programs and plans for their athletes.

Task

Outline a strategic roadmap for developing a direct-to-consumer mental strength training tool tailored to everyday athletes.
Deliver supporting evidence for the roadmap to help strengthen future investment opportunities.

Business benefit
Unlock new revenue streams for OMP through a self-service mental strength training app, while increasing platform usage and engagement frequency.

Customer benefit
Develop a mental strength training tool for both professional and casual athletes that is educational, supportive and adaptive to individual needs.

Problem
Mental strength training is often seen as a remedy rather than a routine, something athletes turn to only when facing performance issues or mental hurdles. This reactive mindset overlooks the value of consistent, proactive training to maintain and enhance mental wellbeing and performance.

Approach
Defining a hypotheses & roaadmap

Before beginning discovery, it was essential to align the team around the ultimate goals, proving that engagement was the right strategic direction and defining an evidence backed roadmap manifesto.

This would set clear, incremental goals for product releases while also informing team structure and resource planning in line with OMP’s financial capabilities.
Working hypotheses
Increasing athlete engagement will result in improvement of not just mental performance, but also impact their overall performance & outcomes.

Our next goal
An insight led roadmap designed to align the team on how to drive self-motivated engagement within the app, while equipping them with the data and learnings needed to make confident decisions and build a continuously evolving, user informed product.

Approach
Comp analysis

We conducted a thorough competitive and comparative analysis to validate product approaches to mental strength training (MST) and performance, while identifying opportunities to support self-directed and continuous MST. Here are some key insights that was uncovered.

Personalised plan
Personalised plans give users a clear, goal-oriented structure that supports progress tracking and builds confidence, particularly for those new to mental strength training. This creates an opportunity to use personal data more meaningfully, delivering a tailored, supportive experience that clearly differentiates the platform.

Autonomous planning
While many competitors rely on a hands-on, self-directed approach, OMP has the opportunity to optimise engagement through more structured, goal-driven programs. By refining how plans adapt and guide users, the platform can better support progression without placing the full cognitive load on the athlete.

Wide catergorisation & discovery
Broad categorisation enables exploration and flexibility, but without guidance it can become a barrier. For users unsure of their objectives or where to start, excessive choice may reduce confidence and engagement. A more directed discovery model helps users find relevant content faster and stay committed to their journey.

Approach
Qualitative findings

We conducted in-depth qualitative research with the internal OMP team and semi professional athletes across a range of sports and age groups. This work validated existing knowledge while uncovering key insights around the need for personalised support, flexible delivery and sustained engagement in mental strength training.

Integrated approaches to training & game-days
Athletes expressed a clear need for personalised tools that seamlessly integrate mental and physical training, particularly across training and game-day contexts.

Personalised preperation routines
Individual training plans and pre-game rituals play a critical role in improving mental readiness, helping athletes enter a focused, performance-ready state.
Post game reflection
How athletes reflect on performance directly impacts learning, growth, and long-term development, highlighting the importance of structured reflection.

Cultural barriers to addressing MST
Sporting culture often reinforces the expectation to “toughen up,” limiting open conversations around mental strength training. At the same time, there is a growing willingness among athletes to engage with MST when it is framed appropriately.
Goal setting & performance tracking
Clear goal setting underpins motivation and progression, enabling athletes to focus their efforts and track improvements over time.
Community support & shared expereinces
Connecting with peers facing similar challenges reduces isolation and builds solidarity, reinforcing motivation and sustained engagement.

Approach
Personas & mindsets

Following our discovery phase, we developed five detailed user mindsets to help prioritise and guide ideation.

These archetypes informed product roadmapping by clarifying which audiences were most viable for early adoption and sustained engagement. Given the educational barrier around mental strength training and resistance among many athletes, Resilience Advocates emerged as the strongest initial audience. These were seasoned athletes who had already embedded MST into their routines and could demonstrate its value in practice.

Younger athletes, in contrast, often lacked a clear understanding of MST and expressed greater willingness to engage if they saw peers or role models actively using it. This insight positioned Resilience Advocates not only as the early adopters, but as catalysts for broader athlete adoption over time.

Solution
A self directed MST experience

Our final recommendation prioritised on value, effort, user retention and alignment with brand values. We proposed delivering immediate and sustained value through features such as habit-forming routine builders, personalised support plans, progress tracking and light-touch gamification.

Together, these elements were designed to balance motivation with meaningful support, encouraging active engagement with MST while respecting the depth and seriousness of each athlete’s mental strength journey.

Personalised plans

From onboarding, personalised plans are embedded into the experience to guide and support athletes through their mental strength training journey with OMP. Plans are curated based on an athlete’s goals, level, sport and desired frequency of engagement, ensuring MST feels relevant, accessible and easy to maintain.
Calendar integration further supports this by aligning mental strength training with training schedules and game days. This enables the app to prompt appropriate off-day exercises and post-match reflection, embedding MST naturally into an athlete’s existing routine.

Engagement hub

The dashboard functioned as a central hub where athletes could engage with both short-term and long-term mental strength training goals. It brought together quick-tip stories, foundational What is MST education modules, recommended plans, routine builders and daily check-ins.
Alongside this, supportive quotes from well-known athletes helped normalise the resistance and difficulty often felt during training, reinforcing that challenge is a natural part of the journey.

Tracking growth

Athletes could track their development through a dedicated growth hub, designed to support reflection, milestone review, and ongoing focus. This allowed users to assess progress over time and identify areas requiring further attention.
Tier-based milestones and badge collection added a light layer of gamification to the experience, rewarding consistency and progress while naturally surfacing the most relevant plans and exercises for each stage. This helped make growth feel structured, motivating, and tangible without detracting from the seriousness of MST.

Routine builder

Users could access a quick mental toolkit featuring foundational MST exercises, including breathing and affirmation practices. This supported more flexible engagement for athletes seeking short, regular touchpoints rather than structured, plan based training.
In addition, athletes could build their own routines to support consistency or draw from pre-designed templates tailored to specific contexts and mindsets, such as injury recovery or confidence challenges, making MST adaptable to changing needs.

Rewards & gamification

Moments throughout the experience rewarded progress through collectible badges that reflected an athlete’s growth in mental strength training. Badges were earned by completing plans, meeting weekly MST goals, or sharing progress with a teammate, coach or parent, adding accountability alongside motivation.

This light layer of gamification made achievement visible without trivialising the MST journey, reinforcing meaningful progress that mirrored the real-world challenges athletes face in training and competition.

Weekly round up

Each week, athletes could complete a weekly round-up to reflect on their game-day experiences. This helped normalise reflection and created space to adjust or shape new plans in response to changing circumstances such as injury, form slumps or confidence challenges.

By embedding reflection into the weekly rhythm, the feature supported consistent MST engagement while adding a personalised layer aligned to where the athlete was within their season.

Monthly wrap up

In response to ongoing engagement with MST plans, exercises, and reflections, athletes received a Monthly Wrap Up that celebrated their progress while summarising how they had felt across the season or off-season. These insights highlighted emerging patterns and suggested focus areas, either identified by the athlete or surfaced by the platform as new goals.

By combining recognition with reflection, the Monthly Wrap Up strengthened long term engagement and positioned the app as a trusted partner in the athlete’s broader mental strength and performance journey.

Testing
Grounds for validation

Concept testing was conducted with the same athletes who participated in the earlier qualitative research. Overall, feedback validated the proposed direction and confirmed the value of a more structured, supportive approach to mental strength training.

Personlised plans
Participants viewed personalised plans as a critical part of the experience, noting that it would help them maintain commitment and consistency in their MST journey. Emerging athletes highlighted the challenge of balancing training with school schedules, while professional athletes emphasised the need for a more systematic and organised approach, both of which were addressed through tailored planning.
Versatile engagement
The ability to follow structured plans or engage in quick, daily exercises was seen as a strong solution to varying needs and availability. For athletes new to MST, this flexibility also helped demystify what mental strength training involved and how it could realistically fit into daily and weekly routines.

Groups & peer support
Emerging athletes, in particular, responded positively to shared journeys and group based support. Participants valued the accountability of inviting teammates to engage alongside them, as well as the open space to discuss challenges with other athletes. This collective environment helped reduce stigma and increased confidence around engaging in MST.

Lite gamification
While gamification had initially been viewed with caution during qualitative research, the introduction of subtle badge collection tied to the growth hub was well received. Participants felt this approach supported progression and recognition without trivialising their efforts, framing milestones as guidance rather than competition.

Solution
Priority framework

To guide OMP’s feature rollout, we developed a priority framework to sequence functionality based on impact rather than breadth.

Each feature was assessed using a weighted scoring model informed by qualitative research insights and common product prioritisation approaches. Scores considered user value, retention potential, cultural fit, delivery effort, and the ability to scale through AI. While the framework provided clear direction, each phase was designed to be validated in-market, with progression dependent on achieving defined engagement thresholds.

The rollout was intentionally phased to mirror how athletes adopt mental strength training over time. Phase 1 prioritised high value foundations such as personalised plans, routine builders, and meaningful onboarding, establishing structure, education, and early habit formation. Phase 2 focused on reinforcing engagement through lighter, more flexible touchpoints including daily challenges, toolkits, and growth meters. Phase 3 consolidated the experience with reflective and social features such as weekly and monthly wrap-ups and opt in accountability groups.

This sequencing ensured that MST was introduced as a supportive practice rather than a feature-heavy product. By validating each phase before increasing complexity, OMP could grow responsibly, building trust, normalising engagement, and supporting long-term behavioural change aligned to real athlete needs.

Outcome
Product bible

At the project’s completion, we delivered a comprehensive product bible that brought together strategy, research, design and planning frameworks in a single, cohesive reference.

While not intended to be prescriptive, it acted as a guiding manifesto, supporting future sprint planning, team alignment and the transition of the OMP app from a B2B offering to a self-directed, consumer-facing mental strength training experience.

The OMP team left inspired and eager to move into development, energised by the clarity of our recommendations. But it was clear to all that this was a shared achievement, driven by close collaboration between the design team and client throughout the process.

Team
Head of Product - Russel Privett
Senior UX/UI Designer - Sean Valadão Duarte
Senior Strategist - Darren Low
Chief Strategy Officer - Alex Vitlin

Tasks
Discovery
Ideation
Strategy
Indicative UI Design
Concept testing