Podium
The single space to keep up with the swift area of road cycling. Racing event calendar, teams overview, racer insights, and a customizable feed to keep up with any news related to road cycling, including events, brands, gear, and more.
2024 – Today
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Design, Research
This is a WIP case study and project I am actively working on. I will update this page incrementally to share my progress in public. To see the current designs, scroll down to the bottom of the page. More designs and updates to follow soon.
Introduction
Podium is the result of me discovering my passion for road cycling back in 2023. It quickly became my favorite hobby to be out on the road, in nature, discovering new routes, climbing up mountains, and pushing myself to new limits. As much as I enjoy to be on the cycle myself, I developed the same passion to watch professionals achieving the impossible, riding throughout three weeks covering over 3,500 kilometers. Therefore, I decided to build my own app to stay up-to-date with the swift scene of professional road cycling, a space where I can read news, get an overview of the races happening within a year, and the teams and riders taking part in those.
The goals
Podium is the result of me discovering my passion for road cycling back in 2023. It quickly became my favorite hobby to be out on the road, in nature, discovering new routes, climbing up mountains, and pushing myself to new limits. As much as I enjoy to be on the cycle myself, I developed the same passion to watch professionals achieving the impossible, riding throughout three weeks covering over 3,500 kilometers. Therefore, I decided to build my own app to stay up-to-date with the swift scene of professional road cycling, a space where I can read news, get an overview of the races happening within a year, and the teams and riders taking part in those.
Consume road cycling news from different sources
Keep track of races happening throughout a year
Get detailed information about races
Get detailed information about teams and riders
Research
Frustrated by the lack of a cohesive, user-friendly cycling app, I dove into the market to understand what was missing. I tested the official Grand Tour apps, Eurosport, Tour Tracker, and Cyclingoo—each falling short in design, customization, or usability. From outdated interfaces and fragmented experiences to overwhelming ads and ignored women’s races, the gaps were clear: cycling fans deserved better. This research not only revealed the flaws in existing solutions but also defined the opportunity to design an app that prioritizes clarity, personalization, and joy for every ride.
The gaps:
Fragmentation: Three separate apps for Grand Tours, no unified experience.
Overwhelm: Ads, clutter, and poor visual hierarchy in Eurosport and Cyclingoo.
Lack of Customization: No way to tailor feeds to personal interests (e.g., women’s races, specific sources).
Design Neglect: Outdated or inconsistent UI, ignoring platform-specific patterns (e.g., iOS tab bars, navigation).
Monetization Missteps: Intrusive ads and pay-to-remove-ads models that degrade UX
Process
Based on the identified gaps in other apps, I wanted to make sure to follow modern design standards with Podium, adapting os-specific design principles. Podium consists of four tabs:
Home: to get a quick glimpse into the most recent news, current races, and upcoming races.
Feed: to stay on top of cycling news.
Races: to get an overview of all races happening throughout the year.
Teams: to get insights into teams and their riders.
Since there is a lot of data coming together in Podium, it was my core focus to design an interface that represents that data in a structured, easy-to-scan, and beautiful way.
Now
By leveraging LLMs as my development partners, I was able to create a first MVP version of Podium. It is amazing feeling to experience that.
I will keep you posted.