Designing Dabble: putting a feed at the centre of sports betting

Sports betting apps had converged on the same shape: a wall of odds, a search box, and a bet slip. Dabble started from a different question: what if the point wasn't the odds, but the people you bet alongside?

We led design at Dabble for their first two years, from idea to launch and beyond, building both the product and the brand. Dabble is now valued at over AU$1.4B, has more than 800,000 users, and operates in Australia, the US and the UK.

The Feed

Every great social app starts with a feed, and Dabble is no different. The first thing you see when you open the app is a rich feed of content and bets, each one copyable with a single tap. That single interaction is the whole thesis of the product: the fastest path to a bet is someone you follow already having placed it.

Betting Experience

The social layer only works if the familiar one still does. We reimagined the exploration and fixture-explorer experience of old to deeply integrate social features while retaining the traditional pathways to placing a bet, so a punter who wants nothing to do with the feed can still find a market in two taps.

Betslip

Place your bets. The slip is the moment the product has to be at its most conventional and its most careful: clear stakes, clear returns, no surprises.

Rocket Boost

Stop the rocket before it crashes. A minigame that gives you a chance to boost your bet was integrated early on, and the Dabble Rocket went on to become a mascot and a core part of the brand. It is the rare piece of product whimsy that outgrows the screen it was designed for.

Banter

Chat with the Dabble community. Betting is already a conversation; the app just had to stop getting in the way of it.

Profiles

Profiles are a core part of Dabble, letting you follow friends and influencers, see their bets, and copy them. They also make the feed accountable: a record that stays visible whether the week went well or badly.

Leaderboard

See where you stack up against other Dabblers.

Beyond compliance

Encouraging safe betting was critical to us when designing Dabble. Right from sign-up we decided to go beyond compliance and build in a range of safety mechanisms and verifications: deposit limits, time-outs and identity checks presented as part of the product rather than as a legal obstacle bolted to the front of it.

Brand design

We were proud to create Dabble's logo, which remains a core part of the brand to this day, since displayed on racecars and at major sporting events.

See the full set of screens in the Dabble gallery.