LiveScore is a sports media platform delivering real-time scores, news, and betting experiences.
Initial Evaluation
Upon inheriting the project, I conducted a thorough review of the existing user journey and assets. Despite prior stakeholder approvals, I identified opportunities for improvement and conducted additional user research to refine the journey. This research highlighted key areas for enhancement, which informed the creation of an updated MVP user journey that balanced user needs with project constraints.
To address the lack of a clear naming and identity process for the game, I initiated and facilitated a series of workshops:
Mind Mapping Workshop
Gathering input from stakeholders across teams to define the game’s purpose, target audience, and positioning within the platform. Exploring the rules and mechanics of the game, identifying core themes to guide naming and branding efforts.
Mood Board Session
Collaborated with marketing, branding, and the free-to-play team to define the visual tone and identity of the game.Participants contributed ideas that shaped the creative direction, ensuring alignment with organisational goals.
Naming Workshop
Brainstormed potential names, narrowing down options through team voting and concept development.
Created preliminary logo concepts for shortlisted names to provide context and enable stakeholders to better visualise the game’s identity.
Stakeholder Engagement
Throughout the process, I maintained close communication with stakeholders to ensure alignment. When initial name options were not approved, I led additional sessions to refine ideas and provide stronger visual and contextual support.
This iterative approach culminated in the selection of Build Up as the game’s official name, which resonated with the intended audience and aligned with the game’s objectives.
Design Execution
With a clear name and direction, I prioritised delivering an MVP that adhered to the established design system. This approach ensured consistency and efficiency, enabling the team to meet the tight launch timeline.
After handing the game over to another team, I worked with colleagues to explore future iterations that incorporated a unique identity for the game. To manage resources effectively, I initially proposed delegating this task but ultimately took ownership to ensure the project’s success.
Achievements
Successfully launched the Build Up game within the specified timeline for the Premier League season.
Introduced a structured process for naming and identity creation, fostering cross-functional collaboration.
Delivered a design that adhered to the company’s design system, ensuring consistency and scalability.
Challenges and Solutions
Challenges
Initial pushback from colleagues and stakeholders regarding the user journey and identity development. However solved with advocating for a user-centred approach, leveraging research and workshops to build consensus and demonstrate the value of proposed changes.
Tight timelines required balancing immediate delivery with long-term goals. The solution was to prioritise an MVP approach while laying the groundwork for future enhancements, ensuring the game’s viability without compromising quality.
Conclusion
The Build Up game was a testament to the power of strategic leadership, collaboration, and adaptability. By pushing back on established assumptions and introducing user-centred processes, the project delivered a valuable addition to the platform.
Looking forward, I recommend incorporating live testing and iterative feedback loops to ensure the game evolves in line with user needs and expectations.
Taking on responsibilities for the core product at LiveScore involved enhancing the end-to-end user journey across two major applications: LiveScore Bets and LiveScore Media.
The primary focus was to streamline and improve the user experience, ensuring consistency across different geographies and scenarios while addressing stakeholder concerns about clarity and alignment.
Workshops and User Journey Refinement
To address challenges in understanding and improving user journeys, I initiated a structured process:
Workshops with PMs
I organised collaborative sessions with product managers to map out their respective journeys. These sessions the team focused on were identifying pain points and inconsistencies from user feedback and internal observations. Addressing gaps in the UX that hindered a seamless user experience. Aligning on a unified vision for user journeys across various teams and platforms. After that, we prepared journey mappings by consolidating input from the workshops. I developed comprehensive journey maps that highlighted areas needing improvement and provided clarity on the visuals and screens presented to users in different scenarios and geographies.
Improving Platform Consistency
Building on the insights from the workshops, I worked to establish greater consistency and clarity across the platform:
Standardised Design Principles
Ensured that the platform adhered to a cohesive design language, reducing variability and enhancing the user experience.
Scenarios and Geo-Specific Adjustments
Designed solutions tailored to address unique needs in different geographies while maintaining the overall platform’s integrity.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
Recognising the complexity of core product improvements, I facilitated collaboration across teams
Brought together stakeholders from different disciplines to ensure alignment and shared ownership of the user experience. Encouraged open feedback loops to iteratively refine designs and solutions, fostering a sense of shared responsibility and accountability.
Improved collaboration and clarity among PMs and stakeholders through structured workshops and journey mapping.
The team and I delivered a more streamlined and consistent user experience across both LiveScore Bets and LiveScore Media platforms. We established a foundation of standardised design principles, ensuring long-term scalability and usability of the platform.
Challenges and Solutions
We encountered a fragmented understanding of user journeys across teams and stakeholders. The solution was to proactively engage teams through workshops and iterative alignment sessions, creating a unified vision.
Addressing inconsistencies in UX and UI across scenarios and geographies was a challenge; however, developing tailored, geo-specific designs while maintaining platform-wide consistency through standardised design principles helped reduce the inconsistencies
Learnings
Collaborative workshops are invaluable in aligning diverse teams and addressing complex challenges.
A clear, standardised design system is essential for creating a scalable and cohesive user experience.
Iterative feedback loops ensure continuous improvement and better outcomes for both users and stakeholders.
Conclusion
Through a structured approach to workshops, journey mapping, and cross-functional collaboration, significant improvements were made to the core user experience across LiveScore Bets and LiveScore Media. These initiatives not only addressed immediate challenges but also laid the foundation for scalable and consistent platform growth.
My primary goal was to optimise the user experience by deeply understanding user needs, aligning with business objectives, and driving a design strategy that would enhance both the app and website.
The project aimed to address key pain points, improve overall usability, and deliver impactful features that contributed directly to business growth.
Through a research-driven approach and cross-functional collaboration, we created a design strategy grounded in user insights while staying aligned with company OKRs.
Stakeholder Alignment & Initial Discovery
The first step in the project was to align with product managers (PMs), product owners (POs), and fellow product designers to understand the broader business goals and user needs. We took time to map out the information architecture of the existing app and website, which helped identify all the layers and pages users navigate through to achieve their goals. This foundational step allowed us to pinpoint areas that required improvement.
User Research & Persona Development
With the research team occupied with other initiatives, I led the effort to conduct user research. I organised moderated user interviews to better understand the pain points and experiences of our users. These sessions provided qualitative insights into user behaviours, challenges, and aspirations. From this data, we developed user personas to define and categorise the key user types we needed to design for, ensuring that our solutions addressed real user needs while aligning with business goals.
Workshop & Cross-Functional Collaboration
To ensure alignment across teams, I facilitated a workshop with PMs, POs, and designers to review the research findings and current user feedback. The aim was to identify critical pain points and potential features that could enhance the user experience. During this session, we worked together to map these features to company OKRs, ensuring that the design priorities were directly linked to the business objectives.
Feature Prioritisation & Roadmap Planning
Once we had a clear understanding of the user pain points and desired features, we used an effort-impact matrix to prioritise improvements, bug fixes, and new features. This exercise helped us focus on the most impactful solutions while managing the effort required for implementation. We created a product roadmap that balanced user needs with business goals, establishing clear milestones for the design and development teams.
Design Implementation & Iteration
With the roadmap and priorities in place, I led the design of user flows, wireframes, and high-fidelity prototypes for the most critical features. Throughout the implementation phase, we iterated based on continuous user feedback and testing. This ensured that the solutions we developed were not only user-centred but also scalable and aligned with the company’s strategic goals.
Looking back, this project was a valuable learning experience that reinforced the importance of cross-functional collaboration and a user-centred design approach. Key takeaways include:
Ownership of User Research
Taking charge of the user research, due to the research team’s limited capacity, allowed us to maintain momentum and ensure a deep understanding of our users before moving into the design phase. This was vital for making informed design decisions.
Cross-Functional Workshops
The workshops with PMs, POs, and designers ensured that all stakeholders were aligned from the outset, helping us avoid potential miscommunications and keeping the design process focused on both user needs and business objectives.
Effort-Impact Mapping
Using the effort-impact matrix proved invaluable for prioritising tasks, balancing user value with feasibility. It enabled us to focus on the features that would deliver the most significant impact while ensuring we could implement them effectively.
Continuous Iteration
Iterating on design solutions based on user feedback and testing allowed us to fine-tune the product and deliver a more polished user experience. This iterative process also ensured that the designs we implemented could evolve with future user needs.
In retrospect, the project not only improved the casino product’s user experience but also reinforced my approach to design leadership—by taking ownership of research, facilitating collaboration, and driving projects with clear prioritisation and a focus on both user and business outcomes.