Product Designer · 2025 - 2026
Pre-tournament to post-final · 26.8% opened the Featured tab · 56% engaged with Team Spotlight
As the product designer in a cross-functional team, I worked across the tournament journey - from early exploration and iteration to shipped experiences across iOS, Android and web.
Tournament context, nearby matches, personalised content and knockout progression came together inside one evolving hub across iOS, Android and web.
We explored several directions before arriving at a focused My National Team experience and a compact bracket that remained readable on mobile.
Key decisionMake the tournament hub useful before, during and after each fan's most important match.
02 - Challenge
Every match changed the competition and what fans cared about. The challenge was building a hub that stayed relevant from the build-up through the final and beyond.
Fans shaped the answer. Our UX researcher led the studies and I designed the versions we tested: a survey of 568 fans, feedback from EURO 2024, and several rounds of usability and preference tests.
03 - Decisions
01 · Build on familiarity
The context. Sofascore already had tournament hubs for competitions such as EURO and AFCON. Users understood their structure, navigation and core behaviours.
The decision. Instead of redesigning what already worked, I evolved that foundation and focused the design effort on the areas where the FIFA World Cup introduced genuinely different needs.
Following their national team ranked second of everything fans wanted to do, and the strongest finding in testing was that the team section should sit higher on the screen.
Separating Tournament and My National Team created a clearer hierarchy and gave personalised content room to become useful.
In testing, fans often scrolled past a banner inviting them to pick a team, but noticed a skeleton preview of the section straight away. The skeleton shipped.
Key takeawayThe key change was not adding another feature. It was deciding which content belonged to the tournament and which belonged to the fan.
02 · Stay relevant
The context. As the tournament progressed, matches changed what fans cared about. The experience needed to continuously bring the current tournament moment to the surface.
The decision. The timeline provided context, the daily schedule focused attention on nearby matches, My National Team gave fans a personalised entry point and the bracket made the path towards the final easier to understand.
01 · Daily relevance
Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow kept nearby matches in focus.
02 · Personalisation
My National Team brought relevant matches, players and content into one view.
03 · Tournament context
The timeline and compact bracket kept tournament progression understandable.
Product principleThe experience balanced what mattered now, what mattered personally and where the tournament was heading.
The expanded tournament introduced more teams, more rounds and significantly more information than previous formats. A complete bracket could no longer be reduced to a single dense mobile view without compromising legibility.
EURO 2024 feedback asked for a bracket that shows progression and reads more easily. In testing, the leading directions performed similarly, so we shipped the newer compact view with a dedicated full view, to learn how it held up in the expanded format.
Full-bracket explorations led to a compact in-hub solution supported by a dedicated detailed view.
Key takeawayThe winning solution separated overview from detail: enough progression in the hub to stay oriented, and the full bracket only when users chose to explore it.
03 · Keep it focused
The context. Designing for a live tournament meant balancing user value, implementation effort and fixed delivery deadlines across iOS, Android and web.
The decision. The survey gave us a ranking to say no with. The lowest-ranked needs, such as community features and trend tracking, stayed outside the critical path.
Shipping the right product mattered more than shipping every idea.
04 - Guided flow
The hub connected the daily schedule, personalisation and knockout progression inside one continuous experience.
Start with where the tournament is now.
The header and timeline gave fans immediate orientation before they moved into matches, standings and deeper content.
Key takeaway
The hub stayed relevant not by adding more at every step, but by shifting the right information and content into view as the tournament evolved.
05 - Lifecycle
The hub was designed as a changing product state rather than a fixed landing page. Content appeared, moved and disappeared as fan priorities changed.
Education, anticipation and choosing a national team.
Nearby matches, highlights and daily relevance.
Progression, leaders and the path towards the final.
Winner, completed bracket and tournament closure.
The destination remained familiar while its hierarchy evolved with the stage of the tournament.
06 - Post-tournament
Its scale made the closing state more than a visual celebration. It became the most important transition from live competition to tournament history.
01 · A clear ending
The final state surfaced the champion, final result and key match content as the strongest closure moment.
02 · The full journey
The bracket became a visual record of the complete path from the Round of 32 to the final.
03 · Beyond the final
End-of-an-era stories and final highlights extended the experience beyond live scores and results.
One final result became a complete record of how the tournament unfolded.
07 - Outcome
Combining global reach with meaningful engagement inside the dedicated tournament experience.
The feature signals describe engagement with the product surfaces discussed in this case study. The platform figures establish tournament scale and are not presented as direct design attribution.
08 - Reflection
A product that changes every day cannot be designed as a set of screens. It has to be designed as a sequence of states, and every one of them has to earn its place.
FAMILIARITY
Fans already understood Sofascore's tournament hubs. Starting from that model and spending effort only where the World Cup was genuinely different meant less to learn for users and less to build for the team.
RELEVANCE
What mattered on 11 June was not what mattered on 19 July. Designing for the tournament's phases, from build-up to the days after the final, kept one destination useful instead of forcing four.
PRODUCT SCOPE
Fixed deadlines across iOS, Android and web decided what shipped. Ideas that did not strengthen the core journey stayed out, and the product was better for the discipline.
Live products do not stay relevant by doing more. They stay relevant by knowing what matters today.