Betmo Sports betting app

My role

Lead UX/UI Designer (heavy focus on UI work)

Project Description

Betmo is a peer to peer sports betting app. It is a platform where anyone can bet on favorite teams by using virtual betmo coins with no real money involved. Users can bet any time including live games, send bets to their friends, other users of the app, and their phone contacts. Bets can be accepted, rejected, or countered. When the game is over users can settle their bet amount.

I worked on creating a seamless user experience that will excite and keep users in the app.

What I did

• User research by conducting interviews with existing and potential users

• Competitive analysis of existing major sports apps (ESPN, CBS, Draft Kings, Zen Sports, etc)

• Design in 2 week sprints and close collaboration with the engineers (documentation in Confluence, tickets and user stories in JIRA, presenting designs via Zeplin, powerpoint, InVision)

• Design of every part of the app (signup, profile, features, setting)

• Prototyping (InVision)

• Close work with the executives of the company (CEO, investors, founders) via Confluence, JIRA, Slack

• Information Architecture

• Design Iteration based on the user and developer feedback

• Created a design system with the brand colors, icons, language, and style

• Built an iOS and Android version of the app

• Incorporated an onboarding guide for new and existing users using Braze in-app messaging

tools i used

Braze, Amplitude, Invision, Sketch, Zeplin, JIRA, Confluence, Slack

Note: the app stopped being developed and the current version in the App Store/Google Play may not function properly.

betmo Structure

Create a Bet flow

Steps:

1. Select a game by using sports filters

2. Pick a team

3. Set point spread (optional)

4. Set bet amount

5. Select a friend/friends/users/contacts to bet

6. Confirm the bet and send

7. Leave a comment

8. After a bet is sent it can be edited or deleted by a sender (until a receiver takes an action on it)

9. A receiver can accept, reject, or counter a bet

10. After bets created they are stored at “Sent/Received Bet Requests”

11. Once a bet Accepted it is displayed in the Feed

direct messages

One of the most important newer features is direct messaging. This feature allowed users to be more social while using the app as well as added stickiness.

Users are able to:

1. Access their messages from their profile

2. Create new messages/Delete existing ones

3. Select one or multiple users for a chat

4. Message and react to messages

5. View chat details (first release allowed users to only see other chat members, later releases were planned to allow actions like “delete chat”, “leave chat”, and the ability to click on user profiles on the chat and “Details” screens)

6. Report users for inappropriate messages

7. A brand new user would always see a welcome message from the app’s character Mo, who guides and helps throughout the app

Note: the example below contains the “Menu” screen that represents Abby Cook, however, the following message screen represent another user that has Abby Cooke as a friend.

Friends

Friends section allows:

1. Access to a list of friends

2. Ability to search for users (if you type a username that is not your friend the system would show all global users with a username that contains a combination of letters typed)

3. Invite new contacts

4. Add friends from contacts

5. Share the app through an invitation link (a “Share” icon on the top right)

6. Later iterations added user action for each friend

For sharing the app, inviting friends or contacts, or adding existing contacts/betmo users as friends a user would receive extra betmo coins which is encouraged people to be more social and ultimately that increased the number of new users. About 70% of new users came to the app through an invite.

The invitation option was given during the signup process so that a user has friends to bet right away and doesn’t abandon the app after download due to lack of social interaction. I conducted a research that revealed that people are reluctant to send bets to random users while betting with their friends is way more fun and competitive.

Sweepstakes

Introducing sweepstakes increased the amount of bets by 50%. Users were encouraged to win coins so they can be used for entering the lottery with tangible prices.

leaderboard

Adding the leaderboard feature added more interest for users to place more bets and to follow them during live games, as well as developed a competitive vibe not only between friends in the app but also amongst all users.

betmo games

This section transfers users to a third party site where different pools are available. Users can create new pools, join existing pools, and invite other people to their pools (don’t need to be a betmo app user to join

Live Widget

At some point a sports live widget was incorporated into the app. That allowed to view pre-game and live game information, see all personal bets related to this game, plus added a social aspect to the app since the commenting feature was added to this part as well.

Share with friends

Users can hare the app through an invitation link. The link would take a receiver to the AppStore where he can download the app. Upon completing the signup process a new user would automatically have a friend added (the person who sent an invitation link). The sender receives betmo coins once that other person signs up.

Wallet

Users can view their coins balance. In Play coins - all bets including sent not accepted bets, accepted bets until the game is over.

Users can see how to earn extra coins and can track their coin transactions.

Feedback

This option was presented in the menu at the earlier stages and functioned as a support center because the app experienced occasional data hiccups. Also, it helped to understand what experience users went through so I could consider the feedback for the future design iterations. Later on this feature was moved under the settings section.

Settings

A betmo user is given an automatically generated username during the signup process. That was done to reduce the signup time spent. A user always can change it in settings as well as his email.

The payment links are off by default and once they on they are available for other users when a bet needs to be settled.

Feed

Global feed, friends feed and personal feed. This is a place where users could see all their and their friends bets, as well as explore all bets across the app. Comment ability made this feature more social and usable. Users also are able to react to each others comments.

My Bets

My bets is essentially a ledger where a user can track how much each of his friends owes him or vice versa.

The option to settle is provided. All settlements are done outside of the app due to legalities and this part of the app is managed manually by user to keep track on their own balance.

bet requests

Sent and received bet requests display incoming and out-coming bets.

User profile

Displays username, available coins, record, friends, and favorite sports that are selected during signup and can be edited from the profile anytime. By tapping on a photo a user can edit it.

Other user’s profile displays user information plus head-to-head record if there is any, and 3 action buttons. Also, besides a user’s favorites you can see mutual friend. On the bottom of the user’s profile there is an unobtrusive link to unfriend.

Favorites

Selected by a user during signup and accessible from a user profile.

Android design

The Android version of the app had a much more limited developing source therefore the functionality was brought down to keeping the most essential features only.

create a bet flow

other features