A fan-focused app thrives on emotion, fast-paced updates and a dynamic interface that makes users feel like they’re inside the stadium. Meanwhile, an athlete-focused app must prioritize clarity, functionality and a frictionless experience that enhances training rather than distracts from it.
The real magic happens when both worlds influence each other — when performance apps integrate engagement loops that keep athletes coming back (think gamified achievements like Duolingo), and fan apps incorporate data-driven storytelling to make stats feel alive.
So how do we design for both? What makes an experience feel intuitive and rewarding for an athlete, and immersive and exciting for a fan? Let’s break it down.
Inside Our Playbook
Over the past few years at STRV, I’ve worked on several sports apps across both of these worlds — some built for die-hard fans, others for athletes looking to improve. Along the way, I’ve seen different perspectives, client expectations and, most importantly, the real needs of users.
As a sports enthusiast myself, I never want to just reskin an app with new colors and fonts. The goal is always to find something that truly enhances the experience — whether through bold visual direction, smarter UX flows or new ways to engage with content. In our team, we push beyond the obvious, searching for small details that shift how people interact with sports apps — because that’s what keeps users coming back.
Leading Soccer Platform
Last year, I was one of the first designers tasked with exploring a bold new visual direction for a leading soccer platform — a complete departure from its previous, monotone aesthetic. The challenge? Engage a younger audience, reignite excitement for soccer and breathe new life into the app.
This is exactly what I mentioned earlier: It wasn’t just about changing colors and fonts. It was a full-on redesign — shifting the focus to fan engagement, personalized content and immersive visuals. The goal was to turn the app into a true fan hub, both in look and in experience.
Your favorite club, your favorite players, the content that matters to you — all front and center. From a research perspective, we explored countless stats-heavy apps, league platforms and club sites. Yet very few truly catered to fans from a visual standpoint. Jersey selections, player spotlights, videos, animations, unique stats — these are the things that make an app feel alive.
Apps covering hundreds of clubs and thousands of players don’t usually have the luxury of deep personalization. But with 30 teams and around 820 players, the company gave us the flexibility to push creative boundaries.
Over six months, we iterated through hundreds of screens, gathered continuous client feedback and pushed past the limits most sports apps accept as the norm. We didn’t set out to only improve the app. We wanted to reshape how fans experience soccer digitally.
The Pump
Designing a fitness app for Arnold Schwarzenegger was a completely different challenge. Dark mode. Raw. Bold. The art direction took direct inspiration from Arnold’s peak bodybuilding era — the grit of the 1970s, with brutalist typography and a nostalgic yet modern tribute to a legend.
But while the aesthetic honored the past, the user experience had to feel fresh and accessible to all generations.
This app was about the workouts, but it was also about community. A place where Arnold himself interacts with users, responds to comments and shares exclusive insights about motivation, nutrition and health. For many, this content was just as valuable as the training itself.
We collaborated closely with Arnold’s core team of fitness and nutrition experts to develop the training content. Many tutorial videos came straight from Arnold’s personal archive — never-before-seen footage from his competitive days.
When it came to progress tracking, we drew from the “old-school” bodybuilders who logged sets and reps in notebooks. In the app, users watch a tutorial, then log their progress — only now, the app handles the calculations for them.
Contributing to Arnold’s brand and digital experience was a once-in-a-lifetime project — one that perfectly blended nostalgia with modern technology.
Mustard
Mustard is the kind of project that thrives on one core goal: making athletes better. With cutting-edge data science and AI, it helps players refine their technique through deep analysis and personalized training plans.
When Rocky and Luke Collis approached us, Mustard had already built a successful app for improving pitching in baseball. Their next vision? Apply that same technology to golf.
The big question: Should Mustard become a multi-sport platform, or should golf have its own standalone experience?
After extensive user research, we found that golfers — like many specialized athletes — needed an app built specifically for their sport. The depth of analysis for a golf swing was unique enough to warrant a dedicated experience.
So, we dove deep into the world of golf: understanding the mechanics of swings and translating that into a structured, digestible training flow.
At first glance, the flow sounds simple: record a swing, get analysis, fix mistakes. But one bad swing usually isn’t caused by just one issue — it’s often a combination. That meant we needed to prioritize errors and offer a clear, actionable improvement plan.
Making Improvement Addictive — Not Overwhelming
A big question: Why would someone come back after just one swing analysis?
The answer was progress.
We created dynamic visualizations that didn’t just show numbers — they told an improvement story. Users could track changes, see tangible gains and understand how small tweaks led to better performance.
The UI Challenge: Clarity Over Complexity
Many sports apps fall into the trap of showing too much data — angles, trajectories, graphs — without enough context. But the result is often a chaotic experience.
For Mustard, we took a different approach. Each insight had to feel like coaching — not a math class.
The UI needed to simplify, not complicate.
Our result? A performance app that educates, motivates and keeps users coming back.
Rec
Rec is a multi-sport platform connecting people around courts. Our task was to create a place where users could quickly book courts or private lessons with certified coaches.
To support Rec’s core mission of being “for everyone, anywhere” — regardless of age, location or digital experience — we kept the UX/UI simple. In fact, we saw senior citizens successfully booking lessons without any assistance.
This MVP was all about user behavior. What does a user journey look like here? How much can we strip down without sacrificing clarity? How do we ensure users don’t resort to booking outside the platform?
We had to account for local differences, like park rules and coach availability across different regions. Safety, smooth communication and real-time availability were essential.
Sometimes, UI and visuals take a backseat to rational decision-making. Dressing up a broken structure is easy. Building something clear, functional, and scalable from day one — that’s harder, but way more rewarding.
In Conclusion
Designing for sports is never a one-size-fits-all challenge. Whether for fans or athletes, the goal is always the same: create something intuitive, engaging and genuinely valuable.
For fans, that means emotion — feeling part of the action. For athletes, it’s about growth — having the tools and insights to improve. But the most exciting work happens when these two worlds merge: when training apps borrow fan-like engagement mechanics and fan apps bring stats to life through interactive storytelling.
At STRV, we’ve learned that great sports apps don’t just look good — they work. They adapt to the people who use them. Whether it’s reimagining a leading soccer platform, building a raw training experience with Arnold or turning complex AI insights into something useful with Mustard, every project reinforces one thing:
The best sports apps become part of how people live out their passion — as fans, athletes or lifelong learners. And we love making that happen.
