Team Behind the Design
- Agency: Goji Labs
- Client: Culdesac
- Category: App Design — Entertainment
- Location: Los Angeles, California
- Project Brief: Design a sports social platform that gives fans a moderated space for structured debate, long-form commentary, and community discussion.
A media and entertainment app for sports fans lives on the argument. Culdesac, built by Goji Labs, gives those arguments a home with structured debate threads, long-form takes, and moderation that keeps the heat constructive.
Sports talk already runs all over the internet, but it scatters across comment sections and quote posts. Fans had nowhere built for a real back-and-forth with room to make a full case.
Goji Labs started with what the client already had: surveys, personas, competitive research, an information architecture, and high-fidelity prototypes. A feature workshop ranked every proposed feature by value and cut the scope down to a focused MVP so the team could build what fans would use first.
A heuristic evaluation of the inherited prototype found weak hierarchy and unclear flows. The team reorganized each screen so fans can follow a debate without hunting for it.
The team also studied Substack, Quora, and Reddit for patterns that work in writing, discovery, and community. Those lessons shaped how Culdesac presents long-form articles and surfaces new takes to readers.
Next came a site map, wireframes, and high-fidelity mockups. Every screen stays inside Culdesac's existing brand palette, and close rounds of client feedback trimmed the interface into something clean and packed with content.
The finished app reads like a publication with a crowd attached. Fans can write a full argument and answer someone else's in the same place.
Results & Impact
Culdesac launched as a content-rich app where sports fans write, read, and argue long-form takes. A cleaner interface and better content organization make commentary easier to find and easier to publish.
- Repeat participation: Fans come back to join debates again and again
- Community approval: Sports communities praised the app for its usability and fun
- Clear market position: Culdesac now holds a distinct spot in sports media
- Room to grow: The MVP sets up future features like polls and live match debates
