Talentive
A mobile app that connects football players, coaches and scouts through skill tests, leaderboards and real rewards. A foundational design engagement that set the visual language before the internal team took it forward.
Football talent, visible to everyone
Talentive's mission is direct: make football skill objectively measurable, so players can prove their talent, coaches can structure real development, and scouts can find great players regardless of postcode.
I was brought in as a contractor to establish the foundational designs — the visual identity, the core flows, and the patterns the client's own design team would build on after handoff.
Game for the player, tool for the scout
The app has to feel exciting to a 16-year-old winger, and credible to a professional scout comparing 200 players. Two audiences, one product.
The challenge was to build a single visual system that celebrates progress without tipping into a cartoonish fitness app, while still giving scouts the clean, data-dense surfaces they need.
Brand book first, interaction second
Talentive came with an existing brand identity — a bold yellow-on-black palette, a strong wordmark, and a tone built around energy and competition. My job was to stick to the brand colors and make the app feel engaging for football players, not to reinvent the visual language.
Figma was the tool; the scope was the first wave of designs: onboarding, the main home screen, leaderboards, the rewards surface, and the challenge flows — including the moment a player receives a head-to-head challenge and accepts or declines it.
Progression as the home screen
"Level 20" is the first thing a returning player sees — alongside their per-category stats (sprint, wallball, reaction, slalom, stamina) and the reward points they've banked. Consistent training compounds into visible rank.
The Level system gave the app a single unit of identity players could rally around.
Head-to-head challenges and leaderboards
The wallball challenge became the product's social hook — direct challenges to friends, scored and ranked. Leaderboards scope to friends, local and global so every player sees a realistic context to compete in.
Promotion to a new rank becomes a milestone worth chasing.
Foundations, handed off cleanly
Talentive launched with the initial design system I established, and the client's internal designer took the product forward from there — a healthy outcome for a foundational engagement. The visual language, core patterns and the engagement loop you see in the app today come from that first wave of work.