Bet Placement

Product Design
0-1
Underdog Sportsbook

← Back to Archives

Overview

At Underdog Sports, I led the design of the Bet Placement feature, focusing on streamlining the betting process for our customers.

My role was integral in transforming a concept into a practical, customer-friendly tool that underscores Underdog's innovative approach to sports betting.


Press about Underdog Sportsbook

• Action Network

• Business Wire

• New York Post

• Yahoo Finance

Go to Underdog Sportsbook
 🡒

My role

Product design

Process development

Project ownership

The team

Design lead: Graydon Driver

Staff PM: Lua Codognotto

PM: Animesh Agrawal

Eng Lead: AJ Bartocci

Product Design Director: Ben Rush

Product Director: Karl Mahrenholz

Director of Technical Compliance: Iveta Taylor

Scope

4 months

Year

2023-2024

Innovating Bet Placement for Underdog Sportsbook

In the world of sports betting, bet placement is where the action starts — customers choose what to bet on, set their wager amounts, and submit.

We focused on these key objectives:

1. High Conversion Rates

2. Ease of Use

3. Competitive Differentiation/Innovation

4. Low Cognitive Load

Over four months, we put our heads together as a team to turn a complex idea into a feature that's easy and enjoyable for our customers to use.

Discovery

I kicked off discovery by partnering with my PM to lead an ideation workshop, collecting insights from designers, product managers, and developers. I focused on inspiration from across industries to explore unique patterns that we could leverage.

Bet slip workshop

Post-workshop, I collaborated with Staff PM Lua Codognotto to refine these ideas through competitive analysis and data review. This phase led to the creation of initial low-fidelity wireframes, setting a solid foundation for further development and iteration.

Bet placement happy path flowchart

Iteration: Challenges & Solutions

Information Density

⛔️ Challenge: A lot of information, very little space.

Example: Competitors' bet slips

I used Gestalt principles to present the bet selection information in an intuitive and easily digestible way.

Single selection card exploration

Cognitive Load

⛔️ Challenge: Decision & information overload.

Our competitors are notorious for combining multiple bet types in the same view. This experience is convoluted and difficult to navigate (especially for casual customers).

Example: Competitor's bet slip / cognitive load

I introduced a segmented control that allows our customers to easily change between parlays and singles.

Segmented control

In alignment with our data showing that more than 70% of bets are parlays, I prioritized customer preferences in the design of our bet slip.

Parlay bet / Single bet / Bet processing

I initially designed preset wager pebbles that would be pre-selected upon opening the bet slip, allowing for the customer to immediately place their bets without having to specify their wager.

However, based on executive feedback, we pivoted to incorporate incremental betting buttons (e.g., +$10) instead.

Preset pebbles to incremental buttons

Robust Error Handling

⛔️ Challenge: Lots of errors that a customer can encounter.

Nobody does error handling well in our industry. How might we create a way for our customers to easily navigate a large range of errors?

List of bet placement potential errors

To ensure clear error handling and communication, I implemented toast messages for timely updates like odds changes, and alert banners for critical actions, such as error resolutions.

Video: Toast & alert banner system

I integrated tags within the bet selection cards to clearly show the status of each bet selection, such as voided, cancelled, or suspended bets.

Status tag system

Iterative Development Process

⛔️ Challenge: No UX research; many assumptions. Difficult to get stakeholder buy-in.

Given the scope of this feature, and lack of UX research, we had a difficult time getting stakeholder buy-in. Because of this, Lua Codognotto (Staff PM) and AJ Bartocci (Eng Lead), and myself created a development process proposal that would help mitigate these issues.

Iterative development proposal

This process allowed us to test, gather feedback, and iterate rapidly, ensuring each aspect of bet placement met our high standards for customer experience and technical performance.

Results

Let's dive into the results and see how bet placement is performing:

• Conversion Rate: 70.3%

• Bet Placement Speed (app open to bet placed): 3.3 minutes

• Bet Type Preference: 76% Parlays, 24% Singles

• Most Common Error Type: Insufficient funds; 51.7%

• Drop-off: 41.9% abandon cart when an error is shown

Learnings

Some of my key takeaways from this experience:

Iterative Development: Breaking down a large project into smaller, manageable phases allows for more focused development, thorough testing, and the ability to adapt to feedback and findings.

User-Centric Innovation: Solutions like the segmented control and preset wager pebbles are examples of how customer needs can drive innovation.

Effective Communication: Clear, concise, and timely communication is crucial for project success.

Collaboration Across Disciplines: The result of close collaboration between design, product management, engineering, and compliance, highlighted the value of cross-functional teamwork.

Process

Innovating Bet Placement for Underdog Sportsbook

In the world of sports betting, bet placement is where the action starts — customers choose what to bet on, set their wager amounts, and submit.

We focused on these key objectives:

1. High Conversion Rates

2. Ease of Use

3. Competitive Differentiation/Innovation

4. Low Cognitive Load

Over four months, we put our heads together as a team to turn a complex idea into a feature that's easy and enjoyable for our customers to use.

Discovery

I kicked off discovery by partnering with my PM to lead an ideation workshop, collecting insights from designers, product managers, and developers. I focused on inspiration from across industries to explore unique patterns that we could leverage.

Bet slip workshop

Post-workshop, I collaborated with Staff PM Lua Codognotto to refine these ideas through competitive analysis and data review. This phase led to the creation of initial low-fidelity wireframes, setting a solid foundation for further development and iteration.

Bet placement happy path flowchart

Iteration: Challenges & Solutions

Information Density

⛔️ Challenge: A lot of information, very little space.

Example: Competitors' bet slips

I used Gestalt principles to present the bet selection information in an intuitive and easily digestible way.

Single selection card exploration

Cognitive Load

⛔️ Challenge: Decision & information overload.

Our competitors are notorious for combining multiple bet types in the same view. This experience is convoluted and difficult to navigate (especially for casual customers).

Example: Competitor's bet slip / cognitive load

I introduced a segmented control that allows our customers to easily change between parlays and singles.

Segmented control

In alignment with our data showing that more than 70% of bets are parlays, I prioritized customer preferences in the design of our bet slip.

Parlay bet / Single bet / Bet processing

I initially designed preset wager pebbles that would be pre-selected upon opening the bet slip, allowing for the customer to immediately place their bets without having to specify their wager.

However, based on executive feedback, we pivoted to incorporate incremental betting buttons (e.g., +$10) instead.

Preset pebbles to incremental buttons

Robust Error Handling

⛔️ Challenge: Lots of errors that a customer can encounter.

Nobody does error handling well in our industry. How might we create a way for our customers to easily navigate a large range of errors?

List of bet placement potential errors

To ensure clear error handling and communication, I implemented toast messages for timely updates like odds changes, and alert banners for critical actions, such as error resolutions.

Video: Toast & alert banner system

I integrated tags within the bet selection cards to clearly show the status of each bet selection, such as voided, cancelled, or suspended bets.

Status tag system

Iterative Development Process

⛔️ Challenge: No UX research; many assumptions. Difficult to get stakeholder buy-in.

Given the scope of this feature, and lack of UX research, we had a difficult time getting stakeholder buy-in. Because of this, Lua Codognotto (Staff PM) and AJ Bartocci (Eng Lead), and myself created a development process proposal that would help mitigate these issues.

Iterative development proposal

This process allowed us to test, gather feedback, and iterate rapidly, ensuring each aspect of bet placement met our high standards for customer experience and technical performance.

Results

Let's dive into the results and see how bet placement is performing:

• Conversion Rate: 70.3%

• Bet Placement Speed (app open to bet placed): 3.3 minutes

• Bet Type Preference: 76% Parlays, 24% Singles

• Most Common Error Type: Insufficient funds; 51.7%

• Drop-off: 41.9% abandon cart when an error is shown

Learnings

Some of my key takeaways from this experience:

Iterative Development: Breaking down a large project into smaller, manageable phases allows for more focused development, thorough testing, and the ability to adapt to feedback and findings.

User-Centric Innovation: Solutions like the segmented control and preset wager pebbles are examples of how customer needs can drive innovation.

Effective Communication: Clear, concise, and timely communication is crucial for project success.

Collaboration Across Disciplines: The result of close collaboration between design, product management, engineering, and compliance, highlighted the value of cross-functional teamwork.

Final Product
No items found.

Outcome

It's clear that the design choices and strategic decisions we made for the bet placement process have positively impacted our customers' experiences. The data not only affirms the success of our current approach but also lights the path for our next steps.

Moving forward, we'll continue to refine and evolve the feature, using these insights as our guide to further enhance customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.

Our commitment remains steadfast: to deliver an exceptional betting experience that's always one step ahead, ensuring that Underdog Sportsbook remains the preferred choice for our customers.

Go to Underdog Sportsbook
 🡒

← Back to Archives

Bet Placement

Next project

Custom Timelines

Twitter
UX Design
Motion Design