Odds Bods
Help punters get odds
Worth a punt
Betting startup Odds Bods asked Question to head up their UX/UI and Creative Design output. Over the course of two years, their Comparison Service went from a series of ideas in a greenfield project into a defined and usable product and eventually boasted the presence of most major bookmakers in the UK along with some further afield.
Number crunching
We answered most of the research questions collaboratively and iteratively, sketching out solutions and verifying their plausibility with key stakeholders in the business. I managed to come up with several key interface innovations which would give the business an edge against their competitors.
The most critical one of these was the Odds Price Block, my solution to the problem of unwieldy odds tables. The mechanic worked by consolidating all the bookmakers’ prices into blocks, instead of showing all prices arrayed on a table against bookmaker names. These would then open when tapped to show which bookmakers were at that price.
It meant the interface was clean and simple, but that more detailed information was readily available. This became our driving ethos moving forward through the project.
Second half
The UI Design phase started to solidify the design, emphasising the user’s journey through the product experience. Clear CTAs were put at thumb level in brand orange, less important things in the visual hierarchy set in blue and grey.
An Interface Inventory was drawn up and prioritised. More polished UI designs were then folded back into the creation of a Pattern Library, using Atomic Design principles.
Liaison with the dev team enabled a coalescence of ideas around animated interaction styles, with an effective approach helping guide users through the process.
Micro interactions
The devil of course is in the detail, and the user’s trust can be won and lost on the merit of the smaller interactions in a UI.
In this example the user knows they’ve made a selection as the Selection Strip animates and flips over, also turning orange to show its new state.
The user also knows the selection has been added to their betslip in My Bets, as the green My Bets roundel has appeared towards the bottom of the screen and its numerical indicator shows a number “1”.
Final furlong
The Odds Bods iOS app went live in October 2018, ten months after the beginning of the process.
The UX, UI, build cycle was ongoing and dozens of new features, upgrades and redesigns were carried out in order to optimise the user’s experience.
The service went on to list odds for almost all major UK bookmakers - including Ladbrokes, Coral, Bet365, Betfair and PaddyPower - and handled over a million price changes every day.
