Bettle Fantasy Sports

Role

Design Lead

Product Designer

Scope

Design Strategy

UX Research

UI Design

Design System

Branding

the Challenge

Fantasy football has long been a slow, season-long grind with payoff only at the end. Bettle aimed to transform it into a skill-driven weekly experience by letting users challenge any roster — inside or outside their league — through 1v1 matchups, group contests, or bulk challenges.

This competitive core was built in parallel with a vibrant Community hub offering expert insights, discussions, and cross-league connections.

Results & Impact
  • Designed key differentiating features, including interleague head-to-head challenges that allow users to compete against any roster outside their home league
  • Delivered our intuitive challenge system utilizing swipe mechanics, and community tools that drove early user acquisition and engagement
  • Achieved strong MVP traction: 3,083 sign-ups, 869 active users who uploaded 1,656 teams, and 338 repeat players
Compete
Contest Card
Upcoming
Confirm Lineup
Confirmation
King of the Hill (Bulk H2H)
Gameday Tab
Land on Gameday to let user know where to keep track of matchups/contests

Assess & Prep

Landscape
1.0
Research
Flow

Market Opportunity

Over the past two decades, fantasy sports has steadily become a mainstream part of American sports culture. Today, about 19% of U.S. adults—roughly 50 million participants—engage in fantasy sports, supporting a U.S. industry valued at around $11 billion.
‍
The rapid growth of legal sports betting, now involving about 23% of U.S. adults, has further amplified interest. With significant overlap—around 80% of fantasy players also participate in sports betting—this crossover reveals strong demand for more interactive and action-oriented sports engagement.

State of the App Upon Joining the Team

I joined Bettle one year in to help realize its mission of redefining fantasy sports. I quickly took ownership of polishing the current experience while championing and fleshing out the app’s signature feature: interleague head-to-head matchups—allowing users to pit their roster against any team outside their league, creating fresh, frequent competitive opportunities.

Bettle was initially built around two core pillars: vibrant community engagement and on-demand wagering on your fantasy teams. Users import their existing leagues and teams into an ecosystem that empowers them to connect, chat, and compete—whether against rivals within their own league or challengers from across the fantasy world. Once a team is uploaded, our APIs automatically pull in league and roster data, enabling effortless management and instant challenges to any team in any league. The original concept drew inspiration from Slack's interface, allowing leagues to create dedicated channels, host DMs and group chats, and embed fantasy-specific actions (like match proposals, rematches, and score tracking) directly into the conversation flow.

User Research

To validate what was already in place i conducted interviews and surveys among a list of a leaguemates of my own and my Bettle colleagues’. The findings helped us influence the ultimate direction of the app by helping us see through existing biases and rethinking the brands philosophy.

Actionable Key Insights
Recommendations

“Taking money from a homie trumps beating a stranger any day of the week.”

8

/20 users shared this view

Explore intraleague game types

  • For many, bragging rights only has value when you can hang it over someone’s head that you care about

  • Relationships built while playing in home leagues is a major reason people love fantasy

“I’d rather compete in group contests where there’s a chance to win 10X the buy-in”

6

/20 users shared this view

Group contests & DFS-style play

  • Managers will gladly sacrifice odds for a higher payout

  • There's interest in bringing a DFS style of play into the home league setting

“I don’t think there’s a need to consolidate all my leagues into one app.”

14

/20 users shared this view

A one-stop-shop for team management is not a priority

  • Players don't want to learn a new user interface

  • The time requirement needed to translate every nuanced detail of each platform would require too much time

“Fantasy is a release from work, a slack-style UI is only taking me out of my happy place”

15

/20 users shared this view

Re-examine the design language

  • The fantasy sports app experience should be familiar

  • Those who are not Slack users might feel alienated

Architectural Flow

Focus our resources on game play and community in order to engage new users.
Based on our findings, we had a much clearer idea of how to build a brand that could stand out in a saturated market.

Realizing Bettle's
Value Proposition

Bettle was built around two core pillars — Compete and Community — to transform traditional fantasy football into a more engaging, weekly experience.
Unlike traditional leagues that lock users into one group with results months away, Bettle offers weekly head-to-head challenges and payouts in the Arena for instant competition and gratification, while the Community hub fosters meaningful connections with leaguemates and players across the platform.
This dual approach drives both user acquisition and long-term retention by giving players multiple ways to engage and stay active week after week.

Compete

The Compete tab is the heart of Bettle’s gameplay experience. Choose between Intraleague (challenge leaguemates within your home league) and Universe (compete against anyone outside your league) — giving players flexibility & reach.

Create or join three distinct game types:
  • Thunderdome – 1v1 Head-to-Head, direct matchup against a single opponent
  • Royal Rumble – Group Contest, DFS-style open contests where the highest score wins the pot
  • King of the Hill – Bulk Open Challenges, one manager posts their team and takes on all comers
Key Differentiator

Challenge and compete against teams outside of your league

Play any team, from any league in a weekly matchup.
More utility for the teams you slave over. Don't limit your teams to one single jackpot. Play as many matches versus thousands of potential opponents every week of the season.
My Team
Opponent
Intraleague
Challenge leaguemates within your home league
vs
Universe
Challenge managers outside of your home leagues
Persistent top navigation across app
Toggle between Intraleague & Universe modes.
Dropdown to select your active fantasy team.
Go directly to Arena to browse teams to challenge
Contests that users can actively join
Featured contests will prioritize partnership contests
Floating button
Opens drawer
Persistent top navigation across app
Toggle between Intraleague & Universe modes.
Dropdown to select your active fantasy team.
Go directly to Arena to browse teams to challenge
Contests that users can actively join
Featured contests will prioritize partnership contests
Floating button
Opens drawer
Metrics
Intraleague

Metrics delivers useful, digestable, under the hood stats to users that home league platforms don't provide. These stats fuel banter and friendly rivalries: they give managers ammo for trash talk in the group chat and naturally encourage head-to-head challenges within the league.

Each card has its own dedicated comment section so no opportunity for smack talk is lost
Arena
intraleague + Universe
The Arena is the core selection flow where users swipe through potential opponents to initiate head-to-head Thunderdome contests.

If you like, Swipe right.

I created a fluid infinite-scroll feed paired with a Tinder-inspired swipe mechanics making discovery fast, fun, and frictionless. This UI pattern draws from a familiar mobile interaction our target users already know well.

Quick & Dirty

Team cards have everything you need to make quick decisions: Head-to-head positional matchups. Health status. Opponent and game location of fantasy players. Trusted projections from Rotowire.

Flexibility

Set the stakes and even give odds. Once you've set the bet parameters, you opponent can accept, deny or counter the proposal.
(Click visual to engage prototype,
'R' to restart)

Community

The Community hub is Bettle’s curated destination for knowledge, connection, and lasting engagement beyond weekly games. It brings together fantasy managers through expert-led content, focused discussions, and relationship-building features that naturally lead to interleague competition.

Key Highlights
  • Seamless content discovery across topic-specific and evergreen threads
  • Highly organized, moderated space for meaningful conversations and idea exchange
  • Access to field experts who share articles, insights, and in-depth thoughts
  • Opportunities to challenge others, spark banter, and build relationships
Channels
intraleague
  • League Standings and Trades are default channels for all intraleagues
  • Custom channels for your league to create
My Feed shows recent channel activity
Trades Channel
  • Quick in-channel poll for managers to approve or challenge trades
  • Turns controversial decisions into engaging discussions
  • Fuels banter, rivalries, and league activity
Boards + Channels
Universe
In Universe, Community opens up Bettle’s social ecosystem with customizable Boards — dedicated sub-communities where users, fantasy personalities, and partner brands create tailored spaces for deeper engagement. The Bettle Public Board serves as the central hub and default view, with a simple toggle to switch effortlessly between Boards and discover new groups.
Board Selection
Explore subcommunities for focused content
My Feed
Highlights the new and high engagement content across all Board subs
Evergreen Channels Persistent threads that serve as lasting hubs for focused, ongoing topics
Discover
Boards + Channels
Universe
In Universe, Community opens up Bettle’s social ecosystem with customizable Boards — dedicated sub-communities where users, fantasy personalities, and partner brands create tailored spaces for deeper engagement. The Bettle Public Board serves as the central hub and default view, with a simple toggle to switch effortlessly between Boards and discover new groups.
Board Selection
Explore subcommunities for focused content
My Feed
Highlights the new and high engagement content across all Board subs
Evergreen Channels Persistent threads that serve as lasting hubs for focused, ongoing topics
Discover
Key Screens
Message
Messaging
Switch between leagues to chat with leaguemates, or use the Universe toggle to access connections made outside your home leagues.
Profile
Get more details about your friendememies.
DM-Challenge
Quick access to challenge any contact directly in DMs. Users can start a new matchup or invite someone to an existing contest.
Key Screens
Home
Home
This unified dashboard keeps users informed, engaged, and ready to compete with minimal navigation.
Pending activity
Track pending challenges sent and received.
Need Action response
Easily accept, decline or counter a challenge.
Key Screens
Gameday
GAmeday
Update lineups for upcoming matchups. Access to pending challenges.
Live
Track live results.
Boxscore
Follow along as the games are happening.

Key Screens

Need some text here describing how these screens round the experience out.

Messaging
Switch between leagues to chat with leaguemates, or use the Universe toggle to access connections made outside your home leagues.
Profile
Get more details about your friendemies.
DM-Challenge
Quick access to challenge any contact directly in DMs. Users can start a new matchup or invite someone to an existing contest.
Home
This unified dashboard keeps users informed, engaged, and ready to compete with minimal navigation.
Pending activity
Track pending challenges sent and received.
Need Action response
Easily accept, decline or counter a challenge.
GAmeday
Update lineups for upcoming matchups. Access to pending challenges.
Live
Track live results.
Boxscore
Follow along as the games are happening.

Attracting Early Adopters + Outcome

The goal was to build a compelling MVP and proof of concept for the 2023 NFL season that would attract early adopters and excite potential investors.

With limited marketing resources, we successfully launched the MVP and achieved strong early traction: 3,083 sign-ups, 869 active users who uploaded 1,656 teams, and 338 repeat players.

Although we were unable to secure additional funding, the initial traction validated the product vision and core mechanics.

Hit me up at