AI App Design

Open App

I was taking a Google Certified UX Design Course and it was time to implement my knowledge into creating an app and responsive website. So I decided to create an app for the Fantasy Football community that makes it easy to research players and make quick, confident roster decisions.

Features:

  • Easily sync teams from different fantasy football sites.

  • Use AI technology to generate individual player evaluations as well as player comparison analysis and an open chat feature for strategy.

  • A Mock Draft feature to help prepare for the draft with AI generated draft evaluations to help improve strategy.

Challenge

my role

  • Creative Director

  • UX Designer

  • UI Designer

  • Developer (AI assisted)

Research

USERS

Being an avid Fantasy Football player for over 15 years I know the kind of time commitment to research it takes to win a championship, it’s A LOT. You need to dedicate yourself to watching hour long podcasts, reading endless articles, and torture yourself over roster decisions. These days I’ve found it very hard to keep up with fantasy football while juggling life responsibility’s and pursuing other interests and as a result my fantasy team has suffered greatly. I needed a solution to streamline fantasy research to get the answers I need quickly.

Then I considered the user who isn’t as experienced as I am. Maybe this is their first time playing, they are in a family league for fun, but they also have a family and career and don’t have the time it takes to research and learn basic strategy to be competitive. As a result they may consistently lose, and nobody likes to lose or god forbid come in last place and become the family joke. So I asked the question:

How can I create an app to help users make quick confident decisions about their fantasy football teams?

COMPETITION

I took a look at some direct and indirect competitors to such as: WalterPicks, FansyPros, Rotobot, Sleeper, ESPN and Cleo. To identify their strengths and weakness.

Competitors’ Strength

  • WalterPicks: excellent visual branding; strong integration with betting props.

  • FantasyPros: massive database of historical data; high trust due to long-standing reputation; aggregates hundreds of human experts.

  • Sleeper: best-in-class notification speed (often faster than ESPN); extremely intuitive and clean UI; strong community features.

  • Cleo (Personality Model): excellent use of humor and "roasting" to drive user engagement; feels human rather than robotic.

Competitors’ weaknesses

  • WalterPicks: can feel transactional (pushing betting apps); advice lacks nuance (giving a grade without context).

  • FantasyPros: "Analysis Paralysis"—providing so much conflicting data that the user can't decide; UI is cluttered and dated.

  • ESPN: AI features ("IBM Watson") are opaque and widely distrusted by serious players; slow to update news compared to Twitter-based apps.

  • RotoBot AI: responses feel robotic and too stat heavy like a talking spreadsheet; lacks the "conversational memory" to understand a user's specific team context over time.

After the research phase I pin pointed “must haves” for the app. I then started exploring color pallets and iterating on layouts and logo designs. The must haves included:

  • Visually it needs to be clean and beautiful

  • Have the ability to sync teams from the top fantasy platforms with an ability to manually import without having to add a player one by one.

  • Player cards that have up to date player evaluations with actionable advice

  • Ability to easily compare players to help with decision making

  • AI Chat feature that knows your roster and can give you the latest news.

  • A mock draft feature to practice draft strategies with up to date ADP. Have AI evaluate how well you did and where you can improve.

  • An AI that has a personality that is just as entertaining as it is informative.

Synthesis & ideation

I kept hearing about “Vibe coding” and how new AI technology has made it easier than ever to build an app, so I thought I’d explore and learn this new technology and see what it could do. I used an app called Lovable and started feeding it my branding guidelines and hi-def wireframes prompting it about each feature.

I took the approach of “learning by doing” and I found out I had much to lear. After months of testing, troubleshooting bugs, learning about “API’s” and the fundamentals of building an AI chat feature, prompt engineering, art directing the minute UI details, learning the difference between a web build and a mobile build, forming an LLC, I finally got it dialed and ready for a launch just in time for NFL pre-season to begin.

I’ve learned a ton about app production, AI, and becoming a founder. My journey is just beginning as I begin planning the marketing strategy for the formal launch.

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