Live sideline coaching
Coaches can follow intensity and session progress while training or matches are underway, with flows designed for lost connections, incomplete datasets, and end-of-session handoff into reports.
Next11
Building live football performance software for coaches and players
A coach tablet app and a player mobile app connected to wearable tags and Edge hardware
- ClientNext11
- IndustrySports technology / football performance
- ProductA coach tablet app and a player mobile app connected to wearable tags and Edge hardware
- FocusLive tracking UX, sports-science analytics, real-time connectivity, release reliability
Overview
What we were asked to build.
Next11 is a football performance-tracking platform that helps coaches and players understand real training and match load — live, on the pitch, without relying on expensive GPS-only setups. The company set out to democratize football tracking: affordable, portable, and accurate enough to matter on the training pitch. Calf-mounted sensors and an Edge device capture intensity and related performance signals live.
WonderIT contributed to the mobile product experience: a coach-facing tablet application for live sessions and team analytics, and a player-facing mobile app for progress, wellness, and personal performance feedback. The apps connect to Next11’s wearable tags and Edge hardware so physical, technical, and tactical signals can be captured, visualized, and acted on in real time.
This page covers the product as it shipped. It also covers how we approached a dual-audience React Native system, real-time hardware communication, sports-science presentation, and the operational maturity needed for a commercial app.
Capabilities
What the product does on the pitch.
Load management and injury-aware planning
Acute:chronic workload ratio, weekly load overviews, and custom benchmarks help staff plan smarter without drowning in raw sensor noise.
Player engagement loop
Players see their own progression, wellness, and team context — closing the loop between what coaches track and what athletes understand.
Hardware-aware mobile engineering
MQTT-based Edge integration, tag management, firmware and update flows, and offline-tolerant sync patterns keep the product usable in real football environments.
The problem
What had to change.
Traditional GPS tracking systems are often expensive, torso-based, and hard to operationalize for many clubs. Next11’s hardware already solves a hard sports-science problem: measuring true player load from the legs — where much of football’s intensity happens — rather than torso GPS alone, and pushing results to the sideline.
The software challenge was equally demanding. Dense live sensor streams had to become calm, coach-ready decisions on a tablet, while players needed a clear mobile experience after the session. Great hardware fails if the software is fragile: coaches need live views under pressure, players need trust in the numbers, networks drop, tags go offline, and sessions end in a mess. Updates must ship without breaking pitch-day workflows.
That meant building for unreliable pitch Wi-Fi, live Edge connectivity, multi-environment releases, dual audiences (coach vs player), and sports metrics that must stay trustworthy under match-day pressure. The product needed software that behaves like a professional coaching tool, not a lab demo.
Goals
What success looked like.
- Support coaches during live sessions with readable intensity and team context
- Give players a mobile experience for progress, wellness, and personal load insight
- Integrate reliably with Edge hardware and wearable tags
- Present sports-science concepts (weekly load, acute:chronic, intensity zones, benchmarks) clearly
- Ship through controlled environments with room for continuous iteration
Approach
How we structured the work.
Dual product surfaces, one engineering system
The codebase serves two distinct experiences: a coach-facing tablet workflow and a player-facing phone app. Coaches manage live sessions, tags, reports, and team structure; players consume progress, wellness, and activity detail. We structured navigation, state, and UX around those realities rather than forcing one generic sports app onto both audiences.
Real-time as a product feature, not a side effect
Live coaching depends on continuous communication with the Edge device. MQTT messaging for commands, status, and output data sits alongside broader real-time patterns so the UI can reflect tag health, session state, and emerging load information as conditions change on the pitch.
Make sports science usable
Metrics like acute:chronic workload ratio only help if coaches can interpret them quickly. We invested in charts, explanations, weekly overviews, intensity zoning, and benchmark comparisons so the product teaches while it informs.
Design for failure modes
Match-day software must handle lost connections, incomplete datasets, wrong durations, missing tags, and interrupted sessions. Dedicated flows and modals turn those moments into recoverable coaching workflows instead of dead ends.
Ship like a product company
Expo EAS build and update channels across testing, staging, pre-production, and production made it possible to iterate safely — critical when software is coupled to physical devices and real club usage.
What shipped
In the product today.
- Coach application (tablet-first) for live sessions, weekly load, reports, tags, and team settings
- Player application for activity history, progress, wellness check-ins, and personal load insights
- Real-time Edge communication for live tag status, session data, and device updates
- Sports-science visualizations: intensity zones, acute:chronic workload, weekly effort, and benchmarks
- Live session lifecycle handling, event and report flows, and dataset completeness checks
- Tag management, Edge update awareness, and connection troubleshooting surfaces
- Custom benchmarks and team/season configuration for clubs
- Production delivery pipeline across testing, staging, pre-production, and production channels
Engineering
How it holds together.
- React Native + Expo for cross-platform delivery with native Firebase modules
- MQTT service layer for Edge broker communication
- Socket-based real-time support for live operational needs
- Redux state management with persistence patterns for coach workflows
- React Navigation across coach tablet and player phone surfaces
- Firebase Auth/Firestore plus analytics and Crashlytics for production observability
- OTA update strategy aligned to Expo EAS environment channels
Results
What it became in production.
The result is a production sports-tech mobile system. Coaches can run live sessions with hardware in the loop, then review load and performance afterward. Players can stay engaged with personal progress and wellness. The product team can release through a mature multi-environment pipeline.
From an engineering and product perspective, the durable win is a trustworthy real-time coaching surface backed by a maintainable dual-app architecture.
- A production-ready dual-app experience for coaches and players
- Real-time hardware integration suitable for live training and match use
- Multi-environment release process supporting continuous product iteration
- Sports-science UX that makes complex load data understandable on the sideline and on a phone
Why this matters
What future clients can take from this.
If you are building software that must talk to hardware, survive imperfect networks, serve more than one user type, and still feel simple — Next11 is a strong reference for how WonderIT works.
We specialize in the hard middle of product engineering: real-time systems, mobile craftsmanship, and domain UX that non-engineers can actually use.