GRDS 323 · WINTER 2025
Bleacher Report — Redesign
A conceptual redesign addressing the three complaints B/R's own users kept repeating in their reviews: a cluttered interface, a credibility problem fueled by influencer content over reporting, and a sense the app had stopped innovating.
ROLE
Solo Project
TIMELINE
10 Weeks
Solo Project
UX Design
Visual Systems
THE PROBLEM
B/R's biggest asset is its audience. Its biggest liability is trust.
I looked for patterns in B/R's own App Store reviews to find what actually needed fixing. The same three frustrations kept resurfacing, in different words, from different users: a UI cluttered enough that finding a live score felt like guesswork; a credibility problem driven by influencer content and forced narratives standing in for actual reporting; and a sense that the app had quietly stopped innovating while ESPN, The Athletic, and even OneFootball moved past it.
"Horrible clunky interface. Finding scores for certain sports appear to be voodoo magic."
Complicated UI · App Store Review
"A new EA video game is not considered college football news... it's incredibly annoying."
Notification Spam · App Store Review
THE RESEARCH
Each step answered a question the last one raised.
I grounded the redesign in real evidence: nine direct competitors benchmarked, five behavior-based personas built from actual user needs, and five core screens sketched on paper before any pixels touched a screen.
Competitive Benchmark
Benchmarked against nine competitors, ESPN, The Athletic, Yahoo Sports, CBS Sports App, FOX Sports App, Sports Illustrated, NBC Sports App, OneFootball, and the PL App, turning "the app feels behind" into specifics: which features were table stakes elsewhere and missing here.
Behavior-Based Personas
"B/R users" isn't one person, so I built five behavior-based personas: the Die-Hard (daily real-time updates, active in discussions), the Fantasy Expert (lives on stats and injury updates), the Social Lover (wants shareable highlight content), the Casual (drops in for digestible trending news), and the Newcomer (wants simplified entry points).
Hand-Drawn Wireframes
Five core screens, sketched on paper before any pixels, including a screen that didn't exist in the original app at all: Home, Search, Community, Scores, and Profile.
Color System
KEY DECISION
Shifting headline tone from opinionated to factual.
The credibility complaints all traced back to the same thing: content that read like clickbait instead of reporting. I had to decide whether "B/R's voice" meant its tone or its trustworthiness.
WHAT I CHOSE
Gave article titles a factual, neutral tone when relaying sports news, cutting the clickbait-style framing directly tied to the "controlled narratives" complaints.
WHY
Trust was the thing actually worth redesigning for. Headlines are the first thing a user judges credibility by, before they've read a single article.
WHAT I DIDN'T CHOOSE
Preserving B/R's casual, meme-driven tone across headlines, the exact tone users cited as the source of the credibility complaints.
WHY
Keeping the tone that caused the complaint would have fixed the UI while leaving the actual trust problem untouched.
WHAT I CHOSE
Removed random podcast-clip content and emojis from headlines so the app reads as reliable and professional.
WHY
Cutting podcast clips and emoji-laden headlines is a small change that directly targets the "complicated UI" and credibility complaints at once, without a full rebuild.
WHAT I DIDN'T CHOOSE
Preserving B/R's casual, meme-driven tone in headlines and notification copy, the exact tone users cited in the "lack of credibility" complaints.
WHY
The casual tone was fun, but it's the same voice users pointed to when describing why they didn't trust the reporting.
FINAL SCREENS
Rebuilt the home page hierarchy from the ground up.
HIERARCHY REBUILT
Home Screen
Restructured the information hierarchy and layout, limiting the repetitive infinite-scroll that buried what users actually came for.
BUILT IN FROM THE START
Community Tab
Added a new Community tab, quizzes, games, VR/AR, in the most prominent position on the nav bar: the center slot.
AN ACTUAL BLEACHER REPORT APP STORE REVIEW
"Have fun watching nobodies and YouTubers forced on you 3/4 of every post."
— 1-star review, Bleacher Report iOS app
That's a trust problem. For an app with Bleacher Report's built-in audience, trust was the thing worth redesigning for.
MY ROLE
Solo, start to finish.
No team to divide this across. Research, synthesis, wireframes, brand system, and final UI were all mine, carried through four project phases over one term.
WHAT SHIPPED
A complete concept carried through to a high-fidelity final UI.
The concept carried all the way through, from hand-drawn wireframes to a complete, high-fidelity UI across all five core screens. This is a course project, without usability testing, engagement data, or user feedback on the final designs. If this gets picked back up, that validation is the obvious next step, before treating any of these decisions as confirmed rather than well-reasoned.