Per Kristian Linnemann | UX/UI Design Portfolio

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Due to contractual confidentiality, some implementation details, business metrics, and product-specific information have been omitted or generalised. Although the project achieved strong user and business outcomes, the underlying data cannot be shared publicly. This case presents a high-level overview of the challenge, my role, and the overall solution. I’d be happy to discuss the project and its outcomes in more detail in person.

01 Understanding the Problem

Before opening Figma, I looked at how users were actually interacting with the product.

Through analytics, user feedback, and competitor research, a few patterns became clear:

Users often visited EasySBC with different intentions depending on where they were in Ultimate Team.
Valuable features remained undiscovered because they were buried in the navigation.
Many players cared about what was currently popular in the community.
Players were motivated by different goals - some wanted to build the best squad possible, while others focused on improving their favourite club.

At the same time, I explored inspiration from products outside our own platform. Websites such as WAVS demonstrated how surfacing trending content could create curiosity and encourage deeper engagement, while competitors highlighted which information players expected to find immediately.

02 Exploring Opportunities

From Research to Strategy

Rather than jumping straight into interface design, we first explored what role the homepage could play in the overall product experience. To generate ideas, we facilitated a series of co-creation workshops where we sketched potential features and content blocks that could spark curiosity, provide immediate value, and encourage users to explore more of the EasySBC ecosystem.

At the same time, I conducted seven user interviews to better understand what motivated players both in EA Sports FC and on EasySBC. Rather than asking users what features they wanted, the goal was to uncover the underlying motivations that kept them engaged with the game.

Two motivations consistently stood out:

Some players were driven by building the strongest squad possible and comparing themselves with others.
Others cared most about progressing and strengthening their favourite club.

These insights became the foundation for prioritising which homepage features would create the most value while naturally guiding users towards the rest of the product.

From sketches to concepts

I explored a wide range of layouts and information hierarchies, testing how different homepage modules could balance feature discovery, personalisation, and ease of scanning. Each concept was intentionally designed around the motivations uncovered during user research, ensuring every module created immediate value while increasing feature discovery across the product.

03 Solution

The final homepage combined several modules, each designed to support a different player motivation while making the platform feel more dynamic and personalised.

Trending Module

Previously, the homepage only highlighted trending SBCs, despite EasySBC offering several other valuable tools. The new Trending section expanded this by surfacing the most popular content across the entire platform — including Players, Evolution Players, and SBCs.

By bringing all trending content into one place, users could immediately discover what the community was engaging with. For many players, this meant discovering newly released players or Evolutions worth pursuing, helping them plan their next upgrades and work towards building a stronger squad. At the same time, it made the homepage feel more dynamic while significantly improving feature discovery across the product.

Favourite Club

Rather than asking users to create an account without a clear benefit, the homepage demonstrated the value upfront. Blurred player cards teased personalised club content, giving users a tangible reason to complete a short bottom-sheet sign-up flow and select their favourite club.

Once activated, the homepage dynamically surfaced players and content related to their chosen club, making the experience immediately more relevant while establishing a personalised foundation for future interactions.

Squad Leaderboards

The Leaderboard introduced a lightweight competitive element by showcasing the strongest squads within the community.

Many players are naturally motivated by building the best possible Ultimate Team. The leaderboard acted as a hook by encouraging comparison, creating curiosity, and giving users another reason to return regularly.

More Modular Hooks

While the final homepage introduced several new engagement drivers, I also explored additional modular hooks that were not implemented during this iteration.

These concepts were rooted in the same user motivations uncovered during research: helping players improve their squads, discover new opportunities, and experience quick moments of value from the moment they landed on the homepage.

Concepts such as SBC Recommendations and Hidden Profits were designed to create immediate aha moments by surfacing personalised opportunities users might otherwise overlook. Beyond providing value, these modules were intended to encourage exploration and guide users further into the EasySBC ecosystem.

04 Impact

From Homepage to Product Hub

Rather than focusing almost exclusively on SBCs, the homepage evolved into a collection of meaningful entry points across the broader EasySBC ecosystem.

By organising content around players’ motivations instead of individual features, users could more easily discover relevant tools—whether they wanted to improve their squad, follow their favourite club, or explore what was trending within the community.

This transformed the homepage from a static entry point into a dynamic product hub centred around discovery, personalisation, and engagement.

The redesign resulted in measurable improvements across several key metrics, including:

167% increase in sign-ups
More than doubled tracked user events
Improved user retention

05 Reflections

This project strengthened my belief that great product experiences begin long before high-fidelity design.

The most valuable outcome didn’t come from redesigning the interface, but from understanding what motivated users and translating those insights into a product strategy. The homepage became more than a collection of features - it became a system designed to help users discover value based on their individual goals.

It also reinforced that UX research creates the greatest impact when it influences product direction rather than validating visual decisions. By combining user interviews, co-creation workshops, and iterative concept exploration, we were able to build an experience that balanced user value with measurable business outcomes.

Ultimately, this project solidified that a homepage isn’t just a navigation layer - it’s one of the product’s most powerful surfaces for driving discovery, personalisation, and long-term engagement.

02 Process

Lo-fi sketches

We kicked off our brainstorm session by sketching on a white board. At this point we suspected the feature would work a lot like the evolutions concept. This lo-fi sketch aligned us and gave me enough context to start wireframing in Figma.

Sketching the desktop and mobile version in Figma

After sketching the core flow on a whiteboard, we moved into Figma to explore both the desktop and mobile experience.

This helped us understand how the feature should adapt across screen sizes. Desktop gave us room to show more information and comparisons at once, while mobile required a more focused and scannable flow.

Making it easy for the user to choose playstyle combinations

One of the core parts of the feature was playstyle recommendations. Instead of asking users to manually compare every possible combination, we wanted the tool to calculate which playstyle combos made the most sense for a specific player role.

The recommendations showed which combinations produced the highest meta rating gain, making it easier for users to understand not just what they could choose, but what would actually improve the player the most.

This was especially important because playstyles can quickly become difficult to evaluate in isolation. A single playstyle might look useful on its own, but the real value often depends on the player’s position, role, stats, and how the combination affects their overall in-game performance.

Work

About

Work

About

03 Outcome

The first version was designed, built, and released within five days.

Early engagement suggested that the feature resonated with users, quickly becoming one of the platform’s most actively used new experiences.

Highlights

5 days from concept to launch
6+ minutes average session duration
Strong early user engagement

While these early indicators were encouraging, they also marked the beginning rather than the end of the design process. The next step would be to validate assumptions through user research, identify remaining friction points, and continue iterating based on user behaviour.

04 Reflections

This project reinforced an important lesson for me: product teams rarely have complete information before they begin building.

Rather than waiting for certainty, the challenge is to identify which assumptions matter most, create value with the information available, and design solutions that can evolve as new requirements emerge.

It also reminded me that speed and quality are not necessarily competing priorities. Moving quickly is not about skipping the design process—it is about reducing uncertainty through rapid alignment, prototyping, and continuous iteration.

Finally, the project highlighted that good product design is not just about giving users more options. It is about helping them make better decisions with confidence by presenting complexity in a way that feels understandable and actionable.

EASYSBC

2025-NOW

PRODUCT DESIGN, UX RESEARCH, UI UX

OPENCORE

2024-2025

PRODUCT DESIGN, UX RESEARCH, UI UX

OPENCORE

2024-2025

PRODUCT DESIGN, UX RESEARCH, UI UX