Designing the AI-powered performance platform that turned serious poker players into elite competitors.
Designing the product that turned serious players into elite ones and turned a $1M vision into a $6M reality.
Role
Lead product designer
Led end-to-end product design for RIVE from concept to launch. Defined the product vision, UX strategy, visual language,
AI-powered experiences, and design system to create a cohesive platform that helped serious poker players continuously improve.
Product design | AI & analytics | Mobile UX | Community | Live platform
2021
Mobile product design · Gaming intelligence platform
RIVE exceeded its first-year revenue target by 6x generating $6M against an initial projection of $1M. Design was not a layer on top of this result. It was the reason for it. An experience so intuitive, so personalised, and so deeply embedded in how serious players think about their game that retention, referral, and revenue compounded from day one.
The challenge
Serious poker players generated thousands of gameplay decisions every month, yet meaningful improvement still depended on manually interpreting statistics, reviewing hand histories, and piecing together insights across disconnected tools.
The opportunity wasn't to provide more data it was to design a smarter way to learn from it.
The opportunity
We envisioned a single intelligent platform where every session became an opportunity to learn. By connecting AI-powered coaching, performance analytics, community, and live learning into one experience, RIVE could transform gameplay data into continuous player improvement.
Experience principles
01
Transform complexity into clarity
Turn complex gameplay data into clear, actionable insights that help players understand what matters most.
Guide continuous improvement
Design every interaction to help players learn, adapt, and improve over time not just analyze past performance.
02
Make AI understandable
Present AI as a trusted coach, delivering timely guidance that feels transparent, relevant, and actionable.
03
04
Live streaming as a native product experience
Design live streaming as a core part of the learning experience, connecting discovery, live interaction, and community into one seamless product.
Research Insights
The objective wasn't to validate features it was to understand how players learn, make decisions, and continuously improve so the product could support that entire journey.
Approach
250+
player conversations
Community insights from r/poker, Two Plus Two, PokerStrategy, CardsChat, and Discord poker communities.
Behavioral mapping across gameplay, review, coaching, live streaming, and long term improvement.
Competitive analysis of GTO Wizard, PokerTracker, Hold'em Manager, and other leading products
Key insights
Players needed direction, not more data.
Most tools showed statistics but didn't help players decide what to improve next.
Learning was fragmented.
Players relied on multiple products to study, analyze, and learn.
Community accelerated growth.
Watching professionals and discussing hands helped players improve faster.
Progress needed to be measurable.
Players wanted to understand long-term improvement, not just individual sessions.
Design impact
These insights led to four strategic decisions:
- AI coaching that recommends the next best action
- Simplified performance dashboards
- Native live streaming and community experiences
- Continuous progress tracking across the player journey
Strategic insight
The opportunity wasn't to build a better poker tracker. It was to design a performance platform that turns insight into action and improvement into habit.
Research revealed one clear insight: serious players didn't lack data they lacked clarity. Existing tools explained what happened, but not what to do next. That insight shaped every product decision, turning data into guidance and improvement into action.
Product experience
One intelligent platform. Every feature designed to help players improve.
RIVE brought together AI coaching, gameplay analytics, performance tracking, community, and live learning into one connected experience. Every interaction was designed to reduce complexity, surface meaningful insights, and help players make better decisions over time.
RIVE's visual language is built on a light-first, data-forward foundation soft blue-grey surfaces, high-contrast numerical data, and an orange-coral accent system that signals action, progress, and achievement without aggression. The system was engineered to make numbers feel alive readable at a glance, trustworthy at depth.
The gamification layer Elite Grinder status, level progression, global rankings, active challenges was designed as a native part of the information architecture rather than a separate rewards system. Every status signal reinforces the player's identity and progress. The result is a product that feels built specifically for the person using it, regardless of their level.
Design system
