Gaffr
Gaffer is a next-generation football app built for casual players, weekend warriors, and competitive small-sided teams across Sydney. The platform helps players discover matches, join teams, chat with teammates, and earn ratings through a unique fair-play scoring system designed to make every game more fun, social, and competitive. The project included full brand design, product ideation, UX/UI design, website design and build, and a complete mobile MVP built in under six weeks, and months of refinement and testing resulting in a fast, modern, football-native experience loved by players all over the city.
(Client)
Gaffr
(TIMELINE)
Ongoing
(SERVICES)
Branding & Identity
UI/UX Design
Framer Development
Copywriting
(challenges)
Building Gaffer meant taking a rough idea and turning it into a fully realised product that footballers across Sydney could love.
1. Refining an idea that wasn’t fully defined
The initial concept for Gaffer was broad and unclear. We needed to use rapid ideation, workshops, and AI tools like v0 to help shape what the product should actually be, what problems it solved, and what the experience needed to feel like for players.
2. Designing a complete brand and MVP in just three weeks
Once the idea was crystallised, we had an extremely tight window to deliver the brand and a full mobile product design including player profiles, match discovery, match management, and a first-to-market rating system. (Think FIFA but IRL).
3. Building the mobile app in under six weeks
After the brand and product design was finalised, we moved straight into engineering, shipping a functional MVP in less than six weeks. For a product with ratings, match tiles, team tools, and real-time interactions, this timeline was exceptionally aggressive.
4. Creating a unique, fair, and competitive rating system
One of the core challenges was designing a rating system that felt fun, fair, and meaningful without encouraging toxicity or unfair voting. It needed to feel competitive but also build community and love for the game.
5. Ensuring the experience worked seamlessly for real players on real pitches
This meant obsessively refining small details like match flows, rating interactions, usability, and core mechanics so that the product actually made football more enjoyable.
(SOLUTION)
1. A structured idea-shaping process using AI
We used v0, ideation frameworks, and rapid prototyping to shape the raw idea into a clear product vision. This allowed us to move from “conceptual” to “concrete” extremely fast.
2. A three-week rapid design sprint
We designed the full brand and MVP in 21 days mapping every core flow, building a complete design system, and crafting a UI that felt modern, energetic, and unmistakably football-native.
3. Fast, parallel-track development
We engineered the entire MVP in under six weeks using a tight feedback loop between design and development, ensuring the product matched the vision without delays or rework.
4. A custom-built fair-play rating algorithm
We created a unique rating experience that encourages fun, fairness, and competitive spirit rewarding teamwork, skill, and positivity rather than bias. It became a defining feature of the app.
5. Deep refinement through real-world testing
After launch, we spent months refining UX, fixing edge cases, improving match flows, and tightening the overall experience based on how footballers actually used the app during real games.
