Rooter

Rooter had built a passionate base of sports fans, but the product treated match time as a one-way broadcast. Fans came for scores and left — community energy existed in WhatsApp groups and Twitter threads, not inside the product.

The challenge: turn a score-checking utility into the place where fans live the match — without overwhelming the core experience that brought users in the first place.

We ran contextual inquiries with 24 fans across cricket and football, mapping their match-day rituals from pre-game banter to post-match analysis. Three patterns emerged: fans wanted to react in the moment, they trusted fellow fans more than pundits, and they loved competition — predictions, polls, and bragging rights.

The design strategy centered on a simple loop: Watch → React → Compete → Return. Every feature had to strengthen this loop. We prioritized live match rooms, fan predictions, and community leaderboards as the first expression of the new experience.

The match room became the heart of the product — a single surface combining live scores, fan chat, and rapid-fire polls. We designed a dark, stadium-inspired visual language that let team colors and live moments carry the energy, while keeping one-handed use effortless.

To keep engagement compounding, we layered in streaks, fan levels, and seasonal leaderboards. Each mechanic was prototyped and tested with fans to ensure it rewarded participation rather than spam — quality of contribution became the ranking signal.

Micro-interactions carried the emotion of sport: goal moments trigger celebratory motion, poll bars animate live as votes land, and team colors tint the room during big plays. Motion was tuned to feel electric but never chaotic.

"Clarity before visual complexity — the energy comes from the fans, the interface just needs to get out of the way."

The redesigned experience launched ahead of the tournament season and immediately changed how fans used the product during live matches.

Beyond metrics, the work reset how the organization thought about the product: from a scores utility to a community platform. The design system and engagement framework built for this release became the foundation for every subsequent feature team.

The biggest lesson: in community products, design's job is to create the conditions for energy — not to manufacture it. The best decisions we made were subtractions: fewer surfaces, clearer rituals, and room for fans to be the content.