Punterclash

Nigeria's unparalleled enthusiasm for sports, particularly football, which is fervently embraced by millions throughout the nation, has naturally given rise to the phenomenon of sports betting. In this narrative, I shall recount the tale of how I brought about a positive transformation in the daily life of a dedicated punter in Nigeria.

As a member of the pitch team, my role encompassed both the formulation of the experience strategy and the development of the marketing strategy. Additionally, I assumed leadership in the design of the iOS app, where I spearheaded the UX efforts, overseeing the creation of all key deliverables in this domain.

The founders approached me with a singular mission: to simply the user experience, enabling sports enthusiasts to fully relish the thrill, escapism, and financial rewards associated with sports betting, thereby nurturing their passion for the sport and their respective teams.

In the ever-evolving world of sports, one phenomenon has seamlessly intertwined with our love for the games we hold dear: sport betting. This intriguing marriage between passion and probability has taken the sports world by storm, captivating the hearts and minds of millions. The thrill of placing a bet, the anticipation as the clock winds down, and the joy (or disappointment) when the final whistle blows - these experiences add a layer of excitement that transcends the ordinary. It's not just about the money; it's about the shared excitement with friends and fellow enthusiasts, the spirited debates over odds and predictions, and the feeling of being a part of something larger than oneself. This has led to the influx of lots of betting apps and platform. These apps share an aim to help casual and "pro" punters enjoy the game. Amongst this crowd was the Punterclash app, which was in dire need of an experience overhaul.

My lack of domain knowledge in sport betting meant I needed to understand the nature of sport betting thoroughly and quickly. I approached all aspects of the project collaboratively and spent most of my time at bet shops.

Throughout the project I conducted ethnographic research and used participatory design methods. This approach was necessary to understand the betting process and the the punterclash's process.

To access our prospective users, we ran interviews at betting shops. This allowed us to quickly understand the day-to-day challenges of a punter.

I went for a streamlined approach that was all about quick sketches, prototyping, gathering user feedback, and whipping up design mockups. It was like a creativity whirlwind, sparking a load of fantastic ideas and giving everyone in our organization a real sense of ownership across various departments.

The discovery phase was a fast-paced and intensive part of our project. It helped us figure out important things like project goals, checking what work had been done before, looking at what our competitors were doing, understanding what the founder wanted, and starting to learn about what users need, what they do, and what problems they face. We also began to explore the technical side of things to see what was possible.

During our research, we found that when it came to this project, people had different ideas about what "betting" meant. People had different reasons for using the service, so it seemed like they might need different things.

To help us make good design choices and keep everyone on the same page, we made up these pretend people called "personas." We used them all the time to help us decide what to work on, what was most important, and to help the client and our team understand and care about the users we were designing for.

Our persona hypothesis consisted of five different archetypes which we used to facilitate discussions about our users needs, desires and varying contexts of use.

We used experience mapping to show and explain how users go through the whole process of interacting with the scheme, including different ways they interact with it. This helped us figure out where users might have problems and where we needed to concentrate our efforts. Also, by mapping out how users feel during this process, we could help the client understand the kind of positive emotions we wanted to create in the design.

Whilst our competitors focus on taking creating a betting experience where the house control all the odds. The game is you stake on the odds the house or platform gives you. our vision was to help users get more pleasure and more more out of it by letting the users control their odds and play against each other.

Our first task–stripping the app to its core and simplifying the experience

Beyond the obvious betting features, we saw opportunities to build a deep emotional connection with our users by emphasizing the social essence behind betting.

We envisioned a platform where users can create a community where they can compete against each other while sharing their passion for the game.

Sport rivalries and banter have always been at the heart of the sporting world, igniting passion and excitement among fans. These intense rivalries, whether it's the age-old clash of football giants or the fierce competition in any other sport, serve as a catalyst for sport betting.

The emotional investment that fans have in their favorite teams and the disdain for their rivals create a perfect backdrop for sports betting. When your team faces its arch-nemesis, the stakes become even higher, not only on the field but also in the world of sports wagering. Betting on these matchups amplifies the excitement and adds a layer of intrigue, making every goal, basket, or touchdown feel like a personal triumph or defeat.

From our research we were able to deduce that In the realm of sports betting, rivalries and banter are like the spices in a gourmet meal—they enhance the overall experience. They transform a simple wager into a passionate, edge-of-your-seat spectacle, where every moment becomes a potential game-changer and featuring this was priority in the design of the app.

Getting to know how people will use the app really helped me understand what our users expect from it. To make sure the app feels just right to them, I came up with a few important ideas. These ideas were like guidelines for how the app should look and feel. They helped us make sure that the app always matched what our users wanted and what our brand represents. We used these ideas all the time to make sure the app looked good, felt right, and sounded just like it should.

We started by looking at the big picture for how the experience should be organized. We did a lot of drawing and making storyboards to come up with ideas about how the app's buttons, menus, and how things should work when you tap them. At first, our ideas were all over the place, but slowly, we started to see a clear plan forming. We created a sort of design guide that showed how things should look and work in the app, and it all started to come together.

Once the founder approved the content and functionality to roll‐out in the app, I could start to structure the content.

I created a low-fidelity prototype of the desktop site in Sketch. I created a UI requirements document to outline all of the features and elements I wanted to incorporate into the design.

The gallery below shows the final iOS app for launch.

In the world of betting apps, where excitement meets strategy, the key to a seamless and enjoyable user experience lies in the simplicity of its wallet system. The journey to create a straightforward wallet system was a necessity, born from the need to make betting accessible and hassle-free the users.

At the core of this simplicity is the understanding that not everyone is a seasoned punter. I made sure our wallet was simple not only for the novice punter but also experience Punters.

The Punterclash app has received both positive and negative feedback since our version 2.0 update. Users have responded well to the app's features and the simplistic redesign and language. Unfortunately, negative feedback largely relates to the timeliness and accuracy of odds data—issues beyond our control as the odds generated for each game are an aggregate of the odds allocated to games by the betting platforms the users interact with in the country and this already subject to ongoing improvements.