UX research · Product design · ESPN Fantasy Social Feed

Fantasy is better together.

Research with fantasy players revealed an opportunity to bring fast, roster-relevant community activity into the product they already use.

RoleResearch · Lead prototyper

Timeline5 weeks · 2025

Team4 contributors

MethodsStakeholder interview · Survey (n=37) · User interviews

01 · The question

Before designing a feature, we had to find the right problem.

The brief gave us room to explore. Research gave us a reason to choose.

ESPN asked us to think ambitiously about community without prescribing a feature. We spoke with its design team, studied existing fan behavior, surveyed 37 fantasy players, and conducted user interviews. We looked for a need that mattered to fans and made sense inside ESPN Fantasy.

Excerpt from an interview with ESPN stakeholders about community and moderation — Stakeholders encouraged an ambitious interpretation of community while identifying moderation as an important constraint.

Five-week ESPN Fantasy research and design timeline — A five-week plan kept research, synthesis, prototyping, and presentation moving in parallel.

02 · The evidence

Fans left sports apps when they wanted conversation.

ESPN was credible and fast. Social platforms supplied the reactions and shared experience.

Only 18.9% of respondents said a sports app was their first stop for news or discussion about a player; 54.1% went to social media instead. Speed and reliability mattered most when choosing a source, but fan community was the second-most cited reason.

54.1%went to social media first for player news or discussion

78.4%prioritized speed and reliability when choosing a source

89.2%followed at least four players on their fantasy roster

Survey chart showing where 37 respondents first go for player news or discussion — Social media (not a sports app) was the most common first stop.

Survey chart showing speed, reliability, and fan community as reasons for choosing an information source — Community mattered, but it could not come at the expense of speed and reliability.

03 · The direction

Make community relevant to the players already on someone’s roster.

Most respondents followed several members of their roster, giving us a natural relevance signal. Rather than building an unbounded social network, we focused the experience on players a fantasy manager already had a reason to care about.

We sketched player profiles, user profiles, reposts, comments, reactions, and filters before combining the strongest ideas into one focused feed.

Collaborative sketches exploring ESPN Fantasy player profiles, user profiles, feeds, and reposts — Parallel sketches helped the team compare several social models before committing to a flow.

04 · The response

One switch turns a broad activity feed into a roster-centered conversation.

Keep ESPN’s familiar hierarchy. Add a lightweight path into the reactions surrounding each player.

I led the high-fidelity prototyping effort in Figma. The concept adds a Following filter to the profile activity feed: off, it preserves broader ESPN content; on, it prioritizes posts, reposts, comments, and reactions connected to followed players.

We presented the research and interactive concept to ESPN as the final deliverable. Because this was exploratory concept work, there are no launch metrics to report.

Open prototype ↗ View presentation ↗ Read brief ↗

ESPN Fantasy activity feed with the Following filter turned off — Following off: the familiar broad activity feed remains intact.

ESPN Fantasy activity feed with the Following filter turned on — Following on: the feed foregrounds content and reactions tied to followed players.

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