Cutting Season is a platform where users can participate in games by betting on how much weight they can lose in a certain amount of time.

User Video Upload & Tracking

Integrated Payments

Mobile-first Approach

Automated Email Campaigns

Game Logic Creation

Video and Statistics Export

Our client wanted to build a web app that could be used as motivation for losing weight. After signing up, users can choose from a variety of games to take part in. These games are created and run by famous fitness influencers.

Each game is a challenge to lose a certain percentage of body mass in a specified amount of time (e.g. 4% in 30 days). To sign up for a game, players have to leave a ‘buy-in’, a certain amount of money that they bet on successfully completing the game.

During a game, a player has to film themselves on a weight scale three times: at the beginning of the game, in the middle and before the end of the game. Authenticity of the videos is maintained by generating random codes which have to be written on a sheet of paper and shown in the video by the participant .

If a player reaches their goal, they split the betting pool with all of the other winners of the game.

Bubble.io

UX/UI Design

Database Design

Responsive Design

Web App Development

API Implementation

The Analysis & Design stages of this project took 2 weeks to complete.

We designed this web app to have two quite different UIs: one that a regular user sees and another one for the admin. The view of the app which is meant for a normal user is fully responsive and can be conveniently viewed from a mobile device or laptop. Admin’s dashboard is designed to be opened on a personal computer only.

The games displayed on the platform had to be as transparent and trustworthy as possible, as users bet actual money on the games they want to participate in.

With this in mind, we designed the screens to provide a lot of information - the number of users currently in a game, the possible prize pool, information on the influencer that created the game and more.

The platform itself is asking players to be fair and prove that they are not cheating with their weight goals by uploading videos for each game. This two-way accountability was created with the hope that it would instill trust in its users.

Shows upcoming games and past games the user has participated in. Number of players, money pool and player progress visible for each game.

Helps the admin track all users and their activity (whether they participate in games, upload videos, etc.). Also shows games won, money earned and current games.

Displays a list of games in detail to the admin, with deadlines, amount of money raised, potential win amount, number of players and more. Also used to edit and publish/unpublish games.

All user-uploaded videos are displayed in one place, with the admin being able to approve or disapprove of uploads one by one and give feedback on why a video was disapproved. Videos can also be downloaded.

The custom software development stage of this project took 1 month to finish.

As the business behind the project was in its infancy and did not have a lot of users, both the frontend and the backend of the application was built on Bubble.io. This kind of solution is not ideal for scalability, but keeps complexity down while the business idea itself is still being tested.

If a project shows high potential for attracting a big amount of users, we advise moving the backend to a dedicated platform such as Xano.

They were committed to delivering a high-quality product and within my expectations, so their customer satisfaction skills were their best attribute. Their team was communicative, responsive, and delivered within deadlines. They adapted to my tight deadlines without an extra charge and even started working before I sent the initial payment deposit, which I appreciated.

Graham Rowe, CEO & Founder

The fact that an administrator has to approve or disapprove users’ videos manually also stands in the way of scalability, however, designing an algorithm to automate the process or delegating it to the influencers who create the games was deemed to be too early for this Minimum Marketable Product.

The platform also has automatic emails sent to users on certain events, such as registering an account, completing (winning) a game, getting sent prize money and more. These emails are sent via a Sendgrid API.