Product design across tournaments, ratings, and player experience amidst major rebrand and refocus.
Jul 2023 – Aug 2024
PERIOD
FIDE Online Arena
COMPANY
TAGS
#Product Design #Web #Chess #IA
World Chess is an online platform where nearly 1 000 000 people play, watch, earn official FIDE Online Arena rating and get official FIDE ID for participating in tournaments: from casual games, to inclusive tournaments like Swiss Queens Wednesday, and legendary events like Clash of Blames, all in one place, right in the browser. When I joined, the product was already packed with features and the rebrand was quietly in motion. The challenge was to make the flows, layouts and features work together keeping the platform strong and ready for what’s coming next.
About this project
A lot of my time went into the places players used the most like building new flows like onboarding, reworking key screens like the game view, and overhauling whole sections like tournaments. I also worked on landing pages for special events, aiming to go beyond the usual interface and make things feel bold, clear, and alive. Behind the scenes, I helped set up a workflow where design didn’t happen in a bubble: before jumping into wireframes, we would check user scenarios and technical requirements with the dev and QA teams, and shared plans with support and marketing to make sure everyone understood the context and direction. It made the process more predictable, easier to sync, and brought design into the conversation early instead of just handing things off at the end.
Any challenges?
l wasn’t just designing for players. Sometimes it meant working on a big event where someone like Kramnik was in the spotlight. Other times, it was making sure a QA could test things without confusion, or a developer could build a feature without running into problems. From adapting the new branding into real product flows to improving handoffs and cleaning up older screens, the work covered a lot but the goal stayed the same: shape features that felt purposeful and make chess look bolder than ever
Highlights