Playtomic App

Playtomic is one of the first Spanish sports scaleups and the first Spanish unicorn with a global impact on the industry. They have an international presence across the Nordic, Latin American, and Middle Eastern markets. Their evolution from a smooth way to rent a court to an immersive padel ecosystem demanded they have an app that was more than just that. In order to break down the borders between the physical and the digital to create mesmerising user experiences, Playtomic needed the best app design possible.

When defining what the future of the Playtomic app would be, we conceived it as being more than just a regular app. We wanted to present a digital meeting point for racket sport players. It had to be an immersive virtual universe to experiment, play, challenge themselves, and, of course, to find the perfect match. An all-in-one assistant to play padel, whenever you want, wherever you want, with whoever you want to.

When designing the feed, we articulated it under the concept of ‘push to play’, championing the idea of getting ready to play within just one screen. This screen is like the user’s personal racket, allowing them to connect with their friends, see their progress, review past matches, read reviews, browse news, and – of course – rent paddle courts.

Within the player’s personal space, we wanted to highlight the social and experiential features, an area conceived as the “matching point”. This means the player can see the percentage of affinity (in terms of paddle) with other players, their own and others’ progression and statistics, their past matches and edit their info.

Even though an inherent aspect of sports is challenging oneself, there’s a bigger one: having fun. That’s why we crafted an innovative and intuitive process to set personalised matches. A friendly way to find the perfect match among players based on their statistics and progression in order to make the best of every game. Plus, during the process, the player can visualise the info of others in a very familiar format similar to Instagram stories. 

But let’s focus on the core of the app: playing a game. Within this area the user has everything they need to create new games, join existing ones, and contribute to the social environment of Playtomic by evaluating their rivals and their games. Let’s set the court!

In a world full of individualism, it’s important to feel part of something, to build a strong community. To expand Playtomic’s reach beyond the app, we aimed at boosting a communal feeling by reinforcing interactions between users. We created rankings, encouraging the users to challenge themselves and others. We also made it easier for a user to start a game by including the statistics of each player, allowing the user to choose among the matches closer to their goals. We are sure that outside of the app and after the game is when the community really grows.

​​Is there anything more social than just talking? We sure don’t think so, which is why we didn’t forget the chat. This feature smooths the communication between users, featuring every kind of extra that contemporary conversations need, such as GIFs, voice messages, videos, and images.

Last but not least, regarding the trajectory of the brand, we wanted to honour their successful history by developing a scalable design system that includes every current and past component, from the colours that highlight the identity, to the cards with every stage of the match.