Digitalising a social game phenomenon
Overview
The one with mobile web first product design of a community gaming tool, defined the visual language and the direction of the product before launch.
Categories
Mobile design
Sideproject
Date
Mar 10, 2025
Client
MVP
Description
MVP is an early stage startup with an ambition to digitalise a betting game played among friends, typically done using paper & pen.
The aim of the game is to chose one team each week without repeating pics, with players eliminated after a single incorrect prediction until only one participant remains.
Key goals.
Deliver lightweight design tailored for user with slower mobile devices, & limited broadband speeds
Avoid all predatory practices or dark patterns, elevating
trust & transparency as the key principle
Empower survival pool admins to create a positive
community of passionate players, steering away from a
competitive environment
User validation.
According to my hypothesis, football betting fans were primary concerned with trustworthiness, internet access and ethical concerns, relating to betting. Survey was sent to a pool of existing customers, with 13 questions
User’s pains
Overhelmed with fixture results, statistics, betting predictions
Overloaded with features & requiring fast internet connection
Trustworthiness, opaque payment system
Pain relievers
Present data in human and approachable way
Creative direction that prioritises lightweight digital assets & speed
Embrace transparent payment processors & off the shelf eWallet platform
Gain creators
Practices based on upholding ethical & moral standards
Positive community effects
Celebrating progress
User’s gains
Prevent burnout & damaging effects as result of betting psychology
Cultivate new good habits
Positive steps in mitigating losing streaks
After completing competitors analysis, I chose to depart from the conventional betting apps design. Instead, I began selecting unique attributes to mirror product’s belief in transparency, ease of access, and user control.
FLUIDITY
Abstract vectors
Lottie animations
Abstract vectors
Lottie animations
LIGHTWEIGHT
Use of color
Typography led
Use of color
Typography led
CONTROL
Insights
Focused statistics
Insights
Focused statistics
Journey map
It was important to comprehend the feel and touchpoints throughout the experience from the users' perspective, so mapping the journey helped to ensure no user dropped out.
Rapidly validating ideas to gather
insights from users.
Tokenised design system.
The primary benefit of this design system is saving time in iterations by using premade UI components and elements. To do this I've worked with the front end engineers to create a semantic list of tokens, defining primitive values and exporting the variables into a github repository engineers can easily use.
Creating a beautiful &
lightweight UI.
Landing moment
The user can check the status of the active pool, as well as latest and upcoming fixtures.
Page loads instantly even on 3G speeds, without compromising of visual delight, thanks to use of Lottie files, vectors, and lightweight JS scripts
Accessing the wallet
Outstanding balance is featured prominently. Nothing is hidden. They have a choice to withdraw or use one of the payment gateway providers.
Trusted payment gateway
Payments & funds are handled by well known third party providers, building trust & transparency with the users, while at same time reducing friction.
Playing the game
The user makes their pick for the week, views the pool's league table and compares probability of their choice making it to the next round.
What I learnt.
Design for technical limitations of your users
Majority of target users don't have access to fast network. This had to be considered from early inception, for the project to be a success.
Understand local user behaviours
It was critical to work with Nigerian teams to get insights in user behaviour, attitudes to services and technology.
