How I Get To Combine Sports And Design Working At Sportsbet 

I’ve always been passionate about sports. In fact, that’s what got me into design in the first place. I was always interested in the branding of sports teams and I loved trying to draw team logos and mascots. 
 
Early on in my career, I worked at a tech startup that was developing a sports app and I really loved that opportunity to combine sport and design. So when an opportunity at Sportsbet came up for me years later, I jumped at the chance to get back to that again.  
 
By that point, I was also excited to work for a large company like Sportsbet. Until then, all my experience had been with startups in small design teams, and I thought it would be good for my career development to work in a big business with lots of customers. 
 
I’m happy to say I was absolutely right! As a market leader, Sportsbet is always looking for ways to innovate, and for me as a designer, I get the chance to explore a lot of innovative new features. It’s incredibly satisfying when I am involved in an ambitious project that ultimately makes it into the hands of our users. 
 
Sportsbet gives me a chance to see how far my design skills can go 
 
Working at Sportsbet has really pushed me to develop as a designer. It’s the kind of environment where you’re always learning. I’ve been involved with huge, exciting projects here, including an entire re-platform of both our iOS app and website. I had the chance to design different features for almost every page of the app, such as the home page, accounts page and payment pages. It was a great opportunity to shape the look and feel of our product and experiences. 
 
It’s obviously important for a UI designer to have strong visual design skills, and a good understanding of how to create visual hierarchy and direct a user's attention to the right places. But since working here, I’ve realised how beneficial it is to also have the skill to create a well-designed icon set, as well as to have a good understanding of motion design. It’s becoming easier to implement motion design into a UI and there’s a lot of scope to play with that at Sportsbet - we’re encouraged to use new technologies and concepts.  
 
I love to create interactive prototypes with lots of animations, so I’m always keen to try the latest prototyping software. I tend to use Principle to create most of my prototypes but will also use programs like Adobe XD, or even Adobe After Effects if I need to create some pretty complex animations. Our developers here have implemented Lottie into our app and website, which allows us to export After Effects animations to code and add them to the app.  
 
I’m also fortunate at Sportsbet to have excellent resources and a dedicated studio design team, which means I have access to a huge library of illustrations and images that align to our brand.  
 
Working here is an exciting challenge 
 
At Sportsbet, we solve user problems on a scale that very few companies in Australia can match. As a leader in our market, we're forced to think about how we can stay ahead of our competitors, and we have a very strong focus on innovation because of that.  
 
We're always trying to raise the bar for ourselves, and to win with design. It creates a really energetic, collaborative environment that’s fast-paced but a lot of fun too. We have a diverse team who have found their way into design via all sorts of different backgrounds, which in itself has been hugely beneficial for me. Seeing different approaches to design and learning from people with different strengths has been very enriching for my professional growth.