Our recent cases. Just a sample, from startups to F500.

Where To Look For References?

One of the most interesting things we’ve been working on lately is ticketing mechanics for football clubs.

Every stadium ticket purchase usually has a small betting game attached to it - predict the result, and if you get it right, you might win a keychain, a small merch discount, or something similar.

We’re now trying to rethink this experience for a few clubs.

And when we started looking for references, the best ones came not from sports teams… but from betting platforms like FanDuel or DraftKings.

It makes sense. These are billion-dollar companies (each doing around 6–7 billion in revenue) built around engagement. FanDuel alone has around 25 million active weekly users. The level of interaction is insane.

And here’s the lesson.

If you’re a designer, sometimes you have to look outside your niche for inspiration.

We don’t work in gambling or casinos - but we studied them anyway. Because if something is that engaging, there’s probably a reason.

Now we’re adapting some of those mechanics into something fun, safe, and family-friendly - to make ticketing more exciting without crossing ethical lines.

For designers, it’s a reminder: don’t stay in your lane.

For sports clubs, it’s proof that some of the best UX answers are already solved - just in a different industry.

The Most Overlooked UX In Football Club Apps

The most interesting screens to design in any sports app isn’t when the game is on. It's actually the empty state - when there’s no match, no score, and no data.

What keeps users opening your app during the off-season?

We design a lot of sports apps and often work side by side with in-house teams. And we saw it multiple times: most designers build experiences around upcoming matches. It makes sense - but it’s also a trap.

Because during the match, you have hundreds of competitors: streaming platforms, live TV, Eurosport, social media, and even a family Whatsapp group with match updates.

The real opportunity lives in the quiet moments - the off-season, the long flights, the boring Tuesday evenings when nothing’s on.

Think about it. On a plane, your app might be the only way a fan can stay connected to their club. Most sports channels don’t work offline, but your app can. That’s where the magic should happen.

So many design efforts are focused on one narrow slice of the journey, while entire blank spaces stay untouched.

We often run 2–3 hour jam sessions just to invent off-season or offline features - and users love them. In comparison, any in-game innovations require much more effort, typically large-scale design sprints for 5 days or more.

This is actually a universal trick – when the design bar is low, even small ideas feel like innovation :)

Hiring Rule That Beats In-House UX Teams In Sport Clubs

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When a child is applying to a top private school, the school doesn’t test for how much the kid already knows. Instead, they test for motivation to learn - the one thing the school can’t teach.

It’s exactly how we hire designers. We’re a distributed team - people work from the US, Europe, and Asia. And if someone isn’t naturally self-driven, no one’s going to fix that remotely.

Everyone knows these stories - someone working three remote jobs, joining meetings from a car, or just coasting. We blacklist that instantly. Not out of cruelty, but because our rule is simple: full commitment during work hours, no exceptions.

And we check it easily. During the trial period, we look at Figma history - how much the person actually produces. Not even about perfection. In design, quantity often turns into quality. What matters is consistent output.

Our designers can produce 20–25 artboards a day for a sports app project.

If someone does 3, it’s clear they’re not really there. That discipline is why our designers often deliver faster and better than many in-house teams at large companies.

Big organizations can afford to hide inefficiency. We can’t - and that’s our advantage.

Which CTAs work best?

“Subscribe” is a button. “Start cooking better” is a story

When you write a CTA like “Subscribe to Newsletter,” you’re promising a process. But what if instead you promise the payoff?

→ “Start cooking better meals”

→ “Get new bonuses daily”

→ “Unlock higher conversions”

That’s what people actually want. In UX copywriting, the magic happens when you wrap a clear button function in emotional context.

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Great examples in the pictures:

1. Adobe Creative Cloud – Make something incredible this summer.

2. Betabrand – Get the insider treatment.

If your CTA is doing all the “what,” you’re missing a chance – add the “why.”

Check If Your Website Actually Works

Many companies struggle to explain what they actually do - without using words that aren’t even on their site.

Which makes you wonder: if you can’t describe your service using your own website, how is your user supposed to understand it?

So now, in almost every web project, we run a simple test for both the client and our internal design team: Try to explain your product or service in under 30 seconds using only the words from your site.

No extra context, no pitch, no “let me explain”. Just what’s already written there.

If you can’t do it, your users won’t be able to either.

You can try this with your own website too. Open it, read the headlines and paragraphs out loud, and try to describe what you sell. If you can’t do it clearly - it’s time to fix your copy.

The Most Efficient Way To Communicate With Your Users

For years, designers have been trained to research “properly”: send polite emails. Ask for a 30-minute call. And then wait for replies that never come.

Because outside our bubble, no one treats email like we do.

People don’t want to schedule feedback. They want to give it in the moment. So we tried a different approach.

After cold email outreach we created a small WhatsApp group with those users who answered. And kept the group alive. Shared designs, small updates, even early ideas and ask for feedback.

That chat became our live research lab with instant reactions. Feedback in five minutes, not five days.

It’s not perfect, of course. You mostly get young, active users - not the whole audience.

But that’s usually enough to catch 80% of bad ideas before they ship.

Because if your WhatsApp group of young active users says your design makes no sense, it definitely won’t get better with older users.

If you want real feedback for your design, check your phone. And if there are zero users in your contacts - you’re probably designing in a vacuum :)

Most Sports Apps Copy The Wrong Competitors

Here’s the funny thing about how football clubs design digital products: everyone looks at what other clubs are doing.

But Chelsea’s app and Arsenal’s app? They’re the same.

You don’t need to analyze other clubs - you need to analyze what your fans are doing when they’re not with you.

We often see agencies working with multiple football teams copy features that another club has already abandoned - features that failed to convert or engage. It’s a loop of repeating mistakes.

The truth is, if you’re responsible for a digital experience - not just in sport, but anywhere - you shouldn’t only look at your competitors. Look at similar behaviors instead.

If you’re designing for the NBA, you can learn more from Netflix than from another league.

Because for your fan, the real decision might be: “Do I open NBA or Netflix tonight?”

Same with ticketing. When we design ticket purchase flows for sports clubs, half of our references come from airlines.

Why? Because it’s the same logic - you’re buying an expensive ticket for an event that happens months later. Emirates or KLM have been solving that UX for years.

Sometimes the smartest thing you can do is stop watching your competitors - and start watching your users.