Designed for the moment everything is live.
Draftsy is a fantasy sports app for US college sports, built team-based instead of player-based, because that is what its users actually wanted. A year-long engagement with BREN LLC, serving fans from college students to 70-year-olds with wildly different fantasy experience.
Interviews with active fantasy players and the founder kept landing on the same two complaints: existing apps are cluttered, and picking individual players kills the team feeling. Those two findings shaped everything.
The draft is the heart of the product and the hardest thing I have designed for mobile: live picks, countdown timers, and what happens when someone walks away mid-draft. Auto-pick lists take over, and the interface has to make that feel fair rather than punishing.
I designed for the drop-off, not just the happy path. We tracked draft completion rate and drop-off points specifically, so abandonment was a measured design input, not a surprise.
- Team-based draftingDraft whole teams, keeping the dynamics fans care about
- Live draft roomReal-time picks, timers, auto-pick fallback
- Quick league creationDirectly fixed the top complaint about competitor apps
- Integrated chatThe social layer competitors were missing
- Seasonal challengesKeeps leagues alive through the off-season
- Clear scoringReal-time point updates without the spreadsheet feel
Engagement rose about 20% after the redesign, and the drop-off tracking on the draft flow gave the team a permanent instrument for finding where users got stuck. One client, one year, one product taken end to end.