One-tap opt-in and lock-screen match updates for The Guardian app, shipped ahead of the 2026 World Cup.

Client: The Guardian · Role: Product Designer (UX) · Team: Design Lead (UI), Senior PM, Research Lead, iOS, Android and web engineers, editorial

Readers followed live matches through a stream of separate push notifications, one for every goal or red card. Live Activities (iOS) and Live Updates (Android) offered a single surface that updates throughout a game. The hard part wasn't the lock screen. It was fitting a new feature alongside following, notifications and live coverage that readers already used.

Benchmarked Apple Sports, FotMob and the iOS and Android platform rules

Defined the core experience: discovery, opt-in and how the Live Activity behaves before, during and after a match

Prioritised the lock screen around the score, match time, key events and a route back into live coverage

Scoped the usability study with UX Research and documented the design rationale before high-fidelity prototyping

One action to opt in. Following a team starts a Live Activity for every match it plays; following a match covers that game only. Simpler, but it put more weight on the word "follow", so the copy had to be explicit.

Reuse what works. I adapted the contextual prompts from Notification Onboarding into an inline card in Sport, a full-screen prompt and a team picker by league.

A reliable kick-off. Auto-starting at kick-off wasn't reliable, so readers who haven't opened the app get a kick-off notification that starts the Live Activity. Android was adjusted to match.

Shipped ahead of the 2026 World Cup

Usability study with 16 football fans (UK and US): 11 of 16 rated it very valuable, 13 of 16 would tap through to live coverage, and all 16 could turn it on without help

Explored election and live news Live Activities, with criteria for when an event deserves one

Easy isn't the same as understood. Everyone completed the tasks, but most saw Live Activities and push notifications as the same thing. Task success alone would have hidden the biggest risk.

Full case study: https://janitadacosta.com/live-activities