Chance.live - Pokémon Startup
Preventing $5,000 accidental swipes, fixing a critical retention issue in my first 15 hours
I joined Chance.live as its first in-house designer shortly after the company secured $3M+ in funding and launched its beta. In my first 15 hours, I identified a critical user drop-off point, challenged the proposed solution, and redesigned a high-risk transaction flow that protected users from costly mistakes while preserving the product's magical luxury experience.
Company
Chance.live
ROLE
Systems Designer
Product Growth Strategist
Team
Front-end Developer
8 Person Company
Duration
15 Hours (part-time)
May 2026
Context
Chance.live is a startup reimagining how people buy, open, collect, and trade Pokémon cards online.
Instead of browsing listings like a traditional marketplace, users purchase digital packs, experience the excitement of opening them, and then sort each card by swiping it into different outcomes.
The challenge wasn't simply digitizing a transaction. The product was trying to recreate a physical experience that collectors already love and make it feel just as magical digitally.
Shortly after launching beta in April 2026, Chance.live brought me on as their first in-house designer while I was still a full-time student. Prior to this, the company relied on external design studios for visual work, but there was a disconnect between the product's goals, business goals, and user needs.
My first task was to improve one of the most important moments in the product: card sorting.
The Problem
A single accidental swipe could cost users $5000+. This irreversible action was causing them to leave.
When users open a pack, they sort cards by swiping them toward different outcomes. At the time, selling a card was an irreversible action. A user could accidentally sell a valuable card worth $5000+ with a single swipe and receive no confirmation before the transaction occurred. I identified this moment as a significant drop-off point in the user journey.
The original card opening process
Users would:
Open a pack
Accidentally swipe a card
Realize the mistake too late, selling is irreversible
Lose trust in the platform
Stop using Chance entirely
This issue also generated support tickets, which created additional operational costs for an already lean team of eight people.
Define the opportunity
How might we make card swiping resilient to human error while still feeling sleek, premium, and magical?
Users needed confidence that they wouldn't accidentally sell a valuable card with a single swipe, while the team needed to improve retention and reduce the support burden that came with those mistakes. At the same time, Chance wasn't trying to feel like an e-commerce app. The goal was to capture the excitement of opening a real pack of Pokémon cards and make it feel even more magical digitally.
The Solution
Instead of teaching users not to make mistakes, I redesigned the workflow to recover from mistakes.
Rather than interrupting users with onboarding overlays and tutorial screens, I designed a lightweight confirmation system built directly into the experience. The result was a redesigned results stage that allows users to review their choices before transactions are finalized. Only one extra click was added to the workflow.
The New card opening process
Added a confirmation layer without using popups
Most products solve this problem with modal windows. I intentionally avoided that approach. Popups felt transactional and e-commerce-like. Instead, I designed a review stage that feels like part of the pack-opening experience itself. Users can now verify their decisions before transactions are executed. The experience stays immersive while significantly reducing costly mistakes.
The New card opening process
Added replay and undo functionality
A replay button allowed users to re-watch the pack opening animation. After swiping past the first card, this became something more useful: Undo. Users could recover from mistakes before finalizing their decisions. This added a layer of safety while keeping the interaction lightweight.
Renamed "Vault" to "Collection" (and created custom icons)
The original language felt heavily influenced by crypto products. While technically accurate, "Vault" felt impersonal and restrictive. We renamed the feature to "Collection". This language better matched trading card culture.
Thinking beyond the immediate release, "Collection" creates room for profile customization, collection sharing, social features, and personal curation. A small naming decision became a foundation for future product expansion. I also created custom icons for the new Collection that communicated fluidity.
Optimized specifically for mobile (majority of users), while maintaining a luxury desktop view (most TCG streamers, higher impact group)
One of the biggest constraints was screen size. The mobile experience had limited space, small tap targets, and dense information. Rather than simply scaling down desktop designs, I created dedicated mobile layouts. I also kept critical actions in consistent locations across screens to reduce cognitive load and improve usability.
research
I wanted to gain a solid understanding of the company's vision before designing anything.
Specifically, product goals, brand vision, business priorities, future roadmap. I met with the team and reviewed website copy, Instagram content, and existing product flows to determine our brand ethos and identify any disconnects. I also reviewed our competitor's websites and features, and determined our key differentiators.
My overarching business goals:
Transform a physical experience into a magical digital experience
Make collecting more collaborative
Achieve a high quality, luxury, streamlined UX
My original task was to design tutorials, onboarding flows, or tooltips that would explain the card sorting experience more clearly.
I spent time researching video game onboarding systems, trading card platforms, tutorial patterns, hover states, and inline guidance systems. The more I researched, the more I felt that tutorials weren't solving the real problem. Adding explanations felt like putting a band-aid on a workflow that lacked feedback. Users weren't making mistakes because they didn't understand the product. They were making mistakes because the system wasn't communicating the consequences of their actions.
UX audit
Where are the gaps between our product, our user's goals, and our business goals?
After walking through the flow as a first-time user, I identified several gaps between user goals, business goals, and the existing product experience:
Selling a card carried significantly more risk than collecting one, yet both actions felt equally lightweight.
Users received very little feedback after making a decision.
The workflow prioritized speed over confidence.
Irreversible actions occurred before users had an opportunity to review decisions.
The product encouraged transactions, but didn't provide sufficient safety mechanisms when users changed their minds.
The highest-impact opportunity wasn't onboarding. It was trust.
the full UX audit
key findings when going through the flow as a potential user
Design exploration
Designing feedback instead of adding friction
I wanted to experiment with spacing and various flows, while being mindful of how elements changed on desktop and mobile, as well as how the placement of elements changes depending on how many cards are opened.
some wireframes
I briefly explored a layout where cards went to the side they were swiped to, and users could drag them around, similar to the physical sensation of opening a card pack.
mid-fidelity exploration
However, this layout would require element changes for mobile, which we wanted to avoid to reduce lag and system complexity.
Design exploration
Building high-fidelity prototypes to test features and validate theories
I built 4 high-fidelity prototypes for desktop and mobile, that looked and felt like the real product. Planned future user testing and validation using these.
part of the mobile 5 cards user flow
desktop 1 card user flow
systems design
Building edge cases and systems, not one-off screens
One thing I noticed quickly was that there wasn't just one version of this experience.
Users can open anywhere from 1-5 cards at a time. Every state needed to account for different card counts, different screen sizes, and different user actions. At the same time, Chance is a small team moving quickly. I didn't want to design a solution that would need to be reinvented every time a new feature shipped.
how does the intro page look different depending on how many cards there are?
A component library allowed me to make iterations 10x faster and makes future feature launches exponentially efficient
As I designed the confirmation flow, I simultaneously built reusable foundations that future work could build on. This included interaction patterns, consistent button behaviors, shared visual treatments, custom iconography, mobile + desktop variants and defined states for all 1-5 card scenarios.
This project became an opportunity to introduce more consistency into the product.
Good design systems aren't just UI kits. They're shared decisions. They reduce ambiguity, speed up development, create consistency across the product, and make future features easier to build. For a startup, that leverage compounds quickly.
Some of the reusable patterns and states I created
Technical Considerations
Designing with desktop + mobile implementation in mind
Because I was working directly with the front-end developer, implementation was part of the design process from day one. For example, I explored a concept where cards physically moved to different piles depending on where users swiped them, mimicking the feeling of sorting real trading cards on a table. While the interaction felt playful, it introduced additional complexity across mobile layouts and multiple card-count scenarios. The additional engineering effort and state management didn't justify the value it created for users. Instead, I focused on solutions that delivered the same feeling of confidence and control while remaining technically lightweight.
This project reinforced something I strongly believe:
The best design solution isn't always the most visually impressive one. It's the one that creates the most value for users and the business relative to its implementation cost.
On mobile, the minimum height of this element should be 440px (max height) so that the confirm button is in the same place each time, for a consistent UX
Success Metrics & Validation Plan
Does making it possible to undo selling encourage users to sell more often?
Because the redesign was completed during beta, I wanted to create measurable hypotheses we could validate over time. The primary metrics I would track include:
Retention
Percentage of users who open another pack after completing the sorting flow
1-day and 7-day retention before vs. after the redesign
Transaction Behavior
Percentage of cards sold vs. collected
Average number of cards sold per session
Completion rate of the sorting flow
Error Prevention
Number of undo actions used
Number of support tickets related to accidental sales
Number of transaction reversals requested
My core hypothesis: users who know they can undo a decision will actually be more willing to make decisions in the first place. In other words, reducing risk may increase selling behavior rather than decrease it.
If I had another week to validate this work, I'd run a lightweight research study using existing users. Because startups move quickly, I prefer low-cost validation methods before investing in larger initiatives. My first step would be testing the original flow against the redesigned flow with 5-10 users.
I'd measure:
Time to complete sorting
Number of accidental sales
Confidence scores after completion
Likelihood of opening another pack
I'd also conduct short post-session interviews to understand how trust changed throughout the experience. This combination of behavioral and qualitative data would help validate whether the redesign improves both confidence and retention.
Impact
A safer transaction flow that still feels magical
Product Impact
Preserved Chance's premium and collectible identity.
Avoided default e-commerce patterns that would have cheapened the experience.
Created a scalable interaction system rather than a one-time feature.
User Impact
Users can now review decisions before transactions are finalized.
Accidental sales become preventable instead of permanent.
The experience provides clearer feedback while maintaining the excitement of opening a pack.
Business Impact
Addressed a major retention issue identified through analytics.
Reduced support burden for an 8-person startup.
Reduced unnecessary backend processing by finalizing transactions later in the workflow.
Created reusable foundations that make future product development faster and more consistent.
future exploration
Custom sound design to shape user behavior and provide feedback
Physical Pokémon packs feel exciting because every action provides feedback. Cards slide, wrappers crinkle, and rare pulls create anticipation. Digital experiences lose many of these sensory cues.
Because of my background in audio production, I see an opportunity to use sound as both feedback and motivation.
For example:
A subtle sound begins when a user swipes toward Sell, and the sound resolves when the action is confirmed
Different card rarities could trigger different audio treatments (epic card -> epic sound)
Collection actions could feel distinct from selling actions
Confirmation sounds could reinforce confidence in decisions
Sound can shape behavior, communicate outcomes, and increase delight without adding visual complexity. This would be worth testing alongside the existing interaction system.
Takeaways
Measure twice. Cut once.
The original request was a tutorial. The real problem was trust.
Rather than immediately executing on the proposed solution, I spent time understanding the business, the users, the product vision, and the data. That extra upfront effort allowed me to move quickly with confidence once the problem was clear.
This project reinforced why I believe in-house design is so valuable for startups.
A designer embedded within the company develops context that external agencies often don't have. They understand the product vision, technical constraints, user behavior, and long-term roadmap simultaneously.
The result isn't just better screens. It's better decisions.
In 15 hours. I was able to identify a retention issue, align a solution with Chance's brand vision, think through implementation constraints, and create reusable foundations for future growth.
That's the type of impact I want to continue bringing to Chance as the product scales.
