a poker experience for friends
Poker Pals is a neo-brutalist mobile poker application designed for casual games between friends. While many poker platforms focus on gambling, rankings, and monetary rewards, this concept explores poker as a social activity centered around shared experiences and collective fun.
The project was created as part of a UI design course with a strong focus on visual identity, interface consistency, and design systems. Rather than researching a new product opportunity, the challenge was to build a cohesive and scalable interface language for a complex gaming experience.
| Project type | Role | Industry | Tools | Duration | Other info |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UI Design | UI Designer | Gaming | Figma | September 2025 - December 2025 | Semester project focusing on interface design, visual systems, and component consistency. |
Poker interfaces contain a large amount of information, controls, and game states. The challenge was to create a visually expressive experience while maintaining clarity and usability during gameplay.
"How might we make poker feel more social, playful, and approachable?"
The project adopts a neo-brutalist visual language characterized by strong contrast, bold typography, heavy borders, and exaggerated shadows. The goal was to create a memorable and energetic interface that stands apart from traditional poker applications.
A significant part of the project focused on creating a scalable design system capable of supporting different game states, screens, and interactions while maintaining visual consistency.
The system includes typography rules, color tokens, button variations, input options,
card components, status indicators, and
betting controls.
Reusable components allowed the interface to scale efficiently while maintaining a cohesive visual identity throughout the application.
The final application combines expressive neo-brutalist visuals with a clear gameplay structure. Players can create private games, invite friends, and enjoy poker in a casual environment focused on shared experiences rather than monetary rewards.
It was interesting to work with a game in systemic interface context. It was also a great challange to implement a neo-brutalist, friendly vibe to a conventionally casino realist, modern game and luxury-minimalist styled interfaces. I learned a lot about how to create a consistent visual language and design system for a complex product, and how to balance expressiveness with usability in a gaming context.