CatchBuddy

Overview

CatchBuddy answers a simple, time-boxed want — "I feel like playing basketball right now" — with a same-day pickup game nearby. And because playing with strangers is the whole premise, safety isn't a settings tab; it's designed into the first tap.

The problem

Finding a spontaneous game means group chats, stale posts, and guesswork — and even when you find one, you're meeting strangers in a park. Most people don't stop playing sports because they stopped loving them. They stop because showing up got too complicated to trust.

The approach

• 1

  Designed a discovery feed around the only two things that matter at 4pm: what's near me, and what starts soon.

• 2

  Layered trust into every profile and game — verification, public venues, reporting — so strangers become players before you commit to showing up.

• 3

  Kept joining down to one confident tap, because every extra step is another chance to talk yourself out of going.

The outcome

A shipped app that makes spontaneous sports easy to find and safe to join — trust design doing the quiet work that turns "I feel like playing" into actually showing up.