Background

As part of Saudi Arabia’s ambitious Vision 2030, the Saudi Esports Federation launched Gamers8, a massive 60-day esports and entertainment festival hosted at Riyadh’s Boulevard Stadium. Following a successful first season, the event scaled dramatically, boasting a 45 million dollar prize pool and expanding into a broader cultural spectacle with concerts, workshops, and international showcases.

Despite the momentum, the existing website failed to reflect the scale and diversity of this world-class experience. With hundreds of overlapping events, the platform lacked navigational clarity, cultural alignment, and international accessibility, limiting its ability to engage the audiences it aimed to attract.

My Role



Led UX for this fast-paced 4-month project, driving end-to-end experience strategy from stakeholder workshops and user interviews to design execution and testing. I collaborated with two visual designers on creative direction and worked alongside a usability expert to validate key flows.

Challenges

To inform the redesign, we conducted secondary research on esports behavior globally and within Saudi Arabia.

We followed it up with a focused two-week research sprint that included:

• Field visits to Riyadh and the festival venue

• Interviews with local users and international visitors

• Analytics reviews of Season 1 traffic and drop-off points

• Discussions with stakeholders and event organizers

  
  

This groundwork helped us identify four core challenges the new experience needed to solve.

Challenge 1. English Only Experience in an Arabic Majority Market

Although Gamers8 was marketed globally, 95% of attendees were Saudi, and 70% preferred Arabic. The English-only website created a language barrier, reducing both reach and relevance for the core audience.

Challenge 2. Esports Aesthetics Clashing with Cultural Norms

Bold colors, edgy visuals, and aggressive character designs common in esports risked alienating a culturally conservative audience. The site needed to balance energy with cultural respect.

Challenge 3. No Way to Navigate by Interest

Gamers8 spanned hundreds of events including gaming tournaments, music concerts, family activities, and workshops. But without interest-based filtering or categories, users were overwhelmed and struggled to find what mattered to them.

Challenge 4. Limited Appeal and Guidance for International Visitors

Despite global promotion, the event struggled to draw tourists. The site lacked travel support and contextual guidance, making Gamers8 feel disconnected from broader Saudi experiences.

Solution



We approached the redesign with four core principles
Accessibility, Cultural Alignment, Personalized Discovery, and Global Integration

1. Visual Identity that Merged Esports Energy with Local Sensitivity

We created a new visual system that retained esports high energy through vibrant gradients, glitter textures, and motion but avoided aggressive imagery, revealing outfits, or suggestive language.

The result was an interface that felt premium, immersive, and respectful, appealing to both gamers and families without compromising on excitement.

2. A Fully Native Arabic Experience, Not Just a Translation

We began by benchmarking leading Saudi platforms and testing with Arabic-speaking users to understand regional expectations and browsing behaviors. This informed our approach to designing a true right-to-left (RTL) experience, not just a translated version of the English site.

Layouts, navigation flows, and visual hierarchy were restructured to feel intuitive for Arabic users. The site now defaults to Arabic in Saudi Arabia and English elsewhere, with both versions offering a native, seamless experience tailored to user context.

3. Interest Driven Navigation that Reduced Overwhelm

We introduced three entry tracks
Esports, Music, and Festival. Within each, events were categorized by personas like For Kids, For Gamers, For Families, and Workshops. This made it easier to discover relevant events without getting lost.

Other enhancements included:

• Daily Highlights for easy same-day planning

• Event tags and filters to refine search

• Dedicated Game Pages with team and player profiles for esports fans
  
  

4. A Travel Companion for International Visitors

To support global participation, we created a dedicated travel section for international visitors. It featured visa guidance, nearby attractions, hotel and transport options, and curated itineraries to help tourists plan their trip around Gamers8.

Impact

The redesigned Gamers8 website didn’t just look better, it transformed the way users engaged with the event.

• Unique Visitors grew from 1.8 million to 3 million (60 percent increase)

• Page Views rose from 4 million to 6.5 million (62.5 percent increase)

• Time on Site jumped from 3 minutes to 5 minutes (66.7 percent increase)

• Bounce Rate dropped from 45 percent to 30 percent (33.3 percent decrease)

• Conversion Rate from visitors to ticket buyers more than doubled from 2 percent to 4.5 percent (125 percent increase)