Delivering a sustainable onboarding experience for new bettors in the Japanese market
Culture-aware UX
Localized content
Retention growth
Overview
Mybet is a sports betting platform for the Japanese market. With a European license and international expertise, the project aimed to deliver a trustworthy and engaging betting experience tailored to Japanese sports fans - particularly beginners with little prior exposure to sports betting.
My role & Design focus
User research and UI design, with a focus on making sports betting feel culturally familiar and approachable for Japanese users while translating complex, operational constraints into a clear and predictable experience.
Collaborated with
Product manager, Lead designer, Marketing team - strategy
Developers - implementation
Third-party provider - match and odds scheduling
Outcome
Helped beginners place their first bet by reducing choice overload
Increased daily engagement while working within operational constraints
Design overview
Problem
Lack of cultural familiarity and relevance for Japanese users
Solution / Approach
Culturally familiar visuals and sections featured Japanese athletes in international leagues
Problem
Overwhelming match density for beginners
Unclear entry point for first-time bettors
Solution / Approach
Curated, beginner-first featured matches
Clear hierarchy guiding users from discovery to first bet
Read full case study
Background
How can we help beginners feel comfortable placing their first bet?
Problem
Sports betting is uncommon in Japan, and many users have little prior exposure. Unfamiliar terminology, complex odds, and too many options at once often make the experience feel overwhelming.
To succeed in the Japanese market, the experience needed to reduce cognitive load, lower psychological barriers, and guide users toward their first bet with confidence - while operating under system constraints.
User goal
Feel approachable and simple to place a bet
Business goal
Lead to successful first bets (conversion)
Challenge
Operational constraint: Content (odds/matches) is dependent on the availability of sports matches and external provider APIs with inconsistent scheduling
What we designed 1
Visual design rooted in cultural familiarity
What we designed 2
Content strategy that guides beginners
After research and team discussions, we structured the start page to help beginners take confident first steps:
Samurai spirit abroad
Highlighting Japanese athletes in international leagues helps users choose matches more easily
Beginner’s widget (My main responsibility)
Curated games with:
Simplified Win / Draw / Lose bets
Short match summaries
Designed specifically to help beginners place their first bet without deep sports knowledge
News section
A news-driven area showing relevant sports updates to keep users engaged and informed
Beginner’s widget
Designing a scalable beginner experience
Before designing, I clarified a set of essential questions to ensure the experience would be simple for beginners while remaining operationally sustainable:
Which sports should we feature?
Can the lineup stay consistent year-round?
How does provider scheduling affect our options?
How many games should we display?
Research & Design decisions
Choosing the right sports for Japanese sports fans
To ensure familiarity and relevance, I conducted research:
Competitor research
identify which sports Japanese users already see in the betting market
Japanese government-controlled betting platforms
understand which sports users are accustomed to betting on
Cultural & media insights
analyze broadcast rankings, news topics, and overall popularity and fan engagement
Decision: Baseball, Football, and Basketball
Featuring sports users already familiar with increases confidence and lowers the barrier for beginners placing their first bet.
Research & Design decisions
Designing a year-round sustainable match lineup
To design a beginner-friendly experience that stays fresh year-round, I balanced sport seasonality, provider constraints, and the number of options to ensure long-term operational sustainability.
Sport calendars
Football
Year-round (domestic & international)
Baseball & Basketball
Complementary seasons
This ensured users consistently saw relevant matches throughout the year.
Provider odds release timing
Odds release timing varied from one day to one week. Football odds were usually released earlier, so we decided to always include at least one football match.
Number of options
Too many options would overwhelm beginners; too few would feel empty.
I benchmarked:
Competitor platforms
Japanese government-controlled betting platforms
Decision: Display 10 games & Update twice a week (Monday and Friday)
A balanced approach that provides enough variety, reduces cognitive load, and remains operationally feasible.
Update schedule
Monday: Weekday matches
Friday: Weekend matches
This allowed us to show consistently fresh matches while staying within provider constraints and maintaining a realistic workload for the content team.
UI design
Designing simple, scannable match information
I explored match card layouts that clearly display:
Sport genre
Team names
Win / Draw / Lose betting options
Short match summaries
Date
I also aligned closely with the front-end team to confirm technical feasibility, as all match data was fetched from the provider.
Final design
Outcome
Simplified the first betting experience for new users
Supported ongoing engagement with a stable content structure
Reduced operational complexity for content updates
Retrospective
This project reinforced how constraint-driven design can improve both usability and scalability.
Key learnings:
Cultural familiarity is a powerful tool for reducing cognitive load for beginners
Constraints can be a design advantage when clearly defined
Clear constraints enable predictable, maintainable UX systems
Simplicity at entry is often more effective than offering more choices
