Designing a social platform for making bets with friends

Besst is an early-stage startup company building for betting on events or with your friends wagering social clout instead of money. As the Design Lead in the founding team, I was responsible for designing the app from scratch, visual style and brand marketing.

My Role: UX/UI Designer

My Contributions: UI/UX Design, Lo/Hi-Fi Wireframes, Prototypes, Branding/Style Guide, Logo Design

Results: 3,000+ people on the waitlist ahead of launch. "50 startups to watch" by BuiltInChicago. Company acquired in June of 2019 by Vintro for core technologies developed.

Duration: June to October, 2018

Challenge

Competing with friends isn't fun when you face a choice between gambling (awkward) or wagering nothing (boring). Is there a way to compete with your friends wagering social clout, instead of money?

People like to bet with friends on sports games, or exams with friends (it's Gamblers Mentality). We want to feel we are actually defeating someone when we win the bet, while not as awkward as going to gambling.

Research

Competitive Analysis

We started by looking for competitive apps in the market, including some most popular sport online betting websites, DraftKings, FanDuel, SugarHouse.

• Most users are sport fans.
• Most branding styles are vibrant and dynamic, vividly representing the spirits of sport.
• Most of them allow users to bet on real money, instead of creating a social community.

Interviews

We specially interviewed around 10 college students among friends. We asked about their experience using existing betting apps and websites, and what their needs are, and were surprised to find out no more than 30% people had experience in betting platforms.

What we learned about Pain Points and Needs from interviews?

• The existing platforms become popular only when there is ongoing huge sport events, or within communities of sport enthusiasts like a fan club.
• Some people don't like investing money.

I've heard of a few such websites, one of them is called Intertop. I bet with my friends and earned some money on it. It was fun. But I think the number of active users will be dropping after the World Cup. ---- Edward, Senior in UIC

I personally don't gamble online on sport games with real money, but I like to bet with friends a lot. We usually watch football on tv and we support different teams. We think the idea is cool. ---- Jessica, 23.

User Insights

To understand the problem in a big picture:

• Users need a long-lasting community with common interests, so they can make bets based on them. We should allow users actively gather as groups based on common interests.
• Making bets is a way to maintain and sustain a community, rather than a goal of a community. We should encourage users to discover topics to bet on, and participate in group bets.
• Money-based betting is boring and costly, lots of people have given it up. Use social clout instead.

Ideate

User Journey

How should this app interfere with betting experience? Journey Maps is used to describe a traditional scenario of a person betting with friends on a sport game.

From the User Journey above, it's clear that people experience negative feelings in three particular stages:

• Icebreaking in awkward social situations.
• Switching apps is painful and troublesome.
• Win or lose a bet: doesn't gain any social clout, or lose real money.

Thus, we focused on 3 goals:

• Avoid awkward social moments.
• An integrated platform.
• Social clout as bargaining chip, not money.

Lo-Fi Prototype

Our observation on social apps led us to a 4-tab layout design.

"Home" showing timelines and friends' updates, "Events" is a list of upcoming events recommended to you to make a bet on, "Profile" shows your personal information as well as history bet records and the betting groups you are a member of, "Inbox" is the place to see bet invitations from friends and results of ongoing bets.

Iteration & Testing

User Testing

We invited people for a quick user test on InVision Mid-Fi prototypes, focusing on layouts and importance of each functionalities.

1. First, we allowed users to interact freely with InVision mockups on phone, guess the purpose of the app. Most of them (~90%) answered correctly.
2. They were asked to start a new bet with friend and/or within groups.
3. Check out bet history, group features (members, updates, news), discovering events, etc.

Iterations on...

• Tabs on top or bottom?
• Number of tabs and what are they?
• Where to put the "Make a bet" button?
• Whether use a hamburger menu icon?
• Whether use an FAB (Floating Action Button)?
• Whether use swipe gesture to switch between tabs?
• Mechanism and logic problems. (How to end a bet? How to design a group bet? How does the system know who wins the bet? Should sports event bets, other bets and personal bets have different publicity settings?, etc.）
• Simplity 'Make a bet' process.
• Details of icons and palette.
• When and who to decide the winner?
• How to set "update visibility"?
• ...

Iteration sketches

‘Make a bet’ Flow

‘Make a bet’ Icon

The design of "Make a bet" icon was a challenge. There are three potential solutions:

1. Find a proper icon to represent the meaning of "Making a bet".
2. Use app's icon.
3. Use "Plus" icon.

Pros and Cons: It's hard to find an icon representing the meaning of "Bet". Even it exists, it's not a universal icon people all understand. Using the app logo is also not feasible because it's not idiographic or representative of anything.

Final decision: "Plus" icon, with a small text label under it. "Plus" simply means creating or publishing content. "Bet" label indicates its functionality, while doesn't take too much space.

Final Design

Features Overview

How are the Problems Solved?

We looked for:

• A long-lasting community with common interests, so that users can make bets on them.

• Betting in interest groups to encourage member engagement, so that the community is maintained and sustained.

• An alternative to money-based betting.

The solution:

• Enables users to connect and create groups with common interests.

• Encourages bets and discussions within groups.

• Keeps users' bet records so that social clout becomes a bargain chip, instead of real money.

Logo, Styleguide and Motion Graphics

Results

• Company acquired in June of 2019 by Vintro for core technologies developed.

Takeaways

Working in a startup environment has its advantages and disadvantages. Obviously, in larger companies, I would have access to more resources such as attending workshops and lectures, learning from senior designers and managers, and have a broader vision in product and strategy level.

Good thing about a startup experience is, being the sole designer in the team, I had the chance to take control of everything related to design, from UX to Visual, even take part in product strategies and marketing research. Communicating directly with develpers and PM helps me, as the designer, to convey my idea very quickly so that it can be implemented and discussed in an efficient manner. Also, I have the freedom to gain more hands-on experience trying design methods and following UX design flow I learned in class, while working in larger teams usually doesn't provide a junior designer the chance to work independently.

Designing a social app is more of creating needs, rather than meeting needs, compared to other categories.

Hardest thing in this project: Validate design. Being the only designer in the team means there is no one else to rely on, and the design is only validated from user research results and data.