At Citizen Sports, I led the redesign of Sportacular, a fast-growing sports app the company had just acquired. While the app had strong momentum, it lacked visual cohesion and suffered from usability issues.
I overhauled the interface and key flows to improve clarity, streamline navigation, and align the design with the company’s brand, resulting in a cleaner, more intuitive user experience.
My Role
Principal designer, working with a small team of iOS engineers.
Purpose
To take a niche real-time sports score tracking app and modernize it for an enhanced user experience.
Outcome
Grew the app to 8M MAUs and led to an acquisition of Citizen Sports by Yahoo!
My approach started with sketching a series of key “hero” screens to define core user flows. I focused on creating intuitive transitions between states and ensuring the most important information was clear, accessible, and easy to navigate.
During the visual design phase, I developed a master document to capture all app states, helping the team align on navigation patterns and ensure seamless user flows.
Usability testing informed several key iterations to the visual design — streamlining navigation and optimizing the experience around rapid access to scores and headlines.
After the release and the rapid success of the iPhone version, work turned to developing a version for the iPad. While sharing the same design library, work focused on making use of the increased real estate the new form factor offered, with an emphasis on easier navigation and more relevant data presented in fewer taps.
The redesign played a key role in the app’s breakout success, helping it become one of the select few iPhone apps inducted into the prestigious App Store Hall of Fame. Its rapid growth and strong user engagement were major factors in driving Citizen Sports’ acquisition by Yahoo!. Following the acquisition, the app was rebranded as Yahoo! Sports, where it continued to serve as a flagship product for the company’s sports offering.
There’s more to this project than shown here. I can provide a deeper look if you’re interested.