Seller + buyer experience · 0→1
Break at a glance
Here's the whole thing before I get into how we got there. A seller sets up a Break on desktop, sells spots during their LIVE, and every spot gets matched to a team. Buyers join from their phone, bid on a spot and watch their team get revealed.
Seller setup: Before going LIVE, the seller creates a Break, picks a team list like NBA teams or adds their own, and gets a spot for each team.
Seller Hub on desktop for sellers, the Palmstreet app for buyers
Overview
If you sell trading cards on a live shopping app, you probably sell them through Breaks. Card sellers were already on Palmstreet, but without Breaks built in they had to work around it, so it wasn't their first choice. Break was how we changed that.
How it started
It actually started with Mystery Box, a format I'd designed earlier. Card sellers began using it to run their own version of a Break: listing a box of teams, selling spots and working out who got what manually. It sort of worked, but it was a hack, and it got messy fast for them. Requests for a real Break feature started coming in from the collectibles side, so we dug into how Breaks work and made it a proper selling format of its own.
My role
I championed Break from 0 to 1 and designed it end to end, for sellers and buyers.
Research
Joined Breaks on Whatnot and Fanatics Live as a buyer, from bidding to the cards arriving, and studied how sellers run them.
Scope
Defined what the MVP needed to cover and made the case for starting on Seller Hub, where card sellers already stream.
Seller flow
Designed setup, running a Break on LIVE, both randomizer options, and clearing and reassigning teams.
Buyer flow
Designed bidding on a spot, the team reveal, every waiting state, bringing buyers back when the Break starts, and the orders after the LIVE.
Edge cases
Mapped every state into a few simple rules for starting, ending and running one Break at a time.
Branding and reveal
Created the Break card art with ChatGPT and the card shuffle animation with Gemini.
I shared every iteration with my PM, the CTO and our Design Lead, and stayed close to engineering and QA until it shipped.
Context
What's a Break?
A seller opens sealed packs or boxes of cards on stream. Before that, buyers buy spots, and each spot gets matched to a team, like the Boston Celtics. Whatever cards come out for your team are yours. It's part shopping, part game night, and that's exactly why it works so well on LIVE.
A Break runs in three stages:
- 1
Filling spots
Buyers bid on spots during the LIVE. Each time a spot sells, a team is randomly assigned to that buyer, using Palmstreet's randomizer or the seller's own.
- 2
Breaking
Once the spots are sold, the seller opens the packs on stream and shows everyone which cards each team pulled.
- 3
Break completed
Every card has been shown and each winner knows what they got. The seller ends the Break, pins the next listing and carries on with the show.
Goal
Give card sellers a built-in way to run Breaks on LIVE, with the flexibility to run the draw their way and fix it on the fly, so every Break feels fair and fun for the buyers watching.
- Why it mattered
- Breaks are the main way cards sell live, so building them in makes Palmstreet a real first choice for card sellers, not a workaround.
- It helps bring in more card sellers and keeps viewers in the stream longer.
- Constraints
- Auction only for now. Buy Now Breaks, where buyers pick their exact team, are a different format and stayed out of the MVP.
- Seller tools live on Seller Hub only. If the signal is good, we bring them to the app later.
- Build on what we already had instead of a new checkout or order system.
Research
Learning how Breaks work
Breaks were new to me, so I learned by doing. On Whatnot and Fanatics Live, I joined Breaks as a buyer, from bidding on a spot to the cards arriving, and explored their seller tools for setting up and running one. I also watched how chat and OBS-run streams work. We also talked to two experienced breakers, Tuggy Co and ChiCollectibles. A few things kept coming up.
Breaks are the business
Many card sellers run almost everything through Breaks. One told us anything they get in goes into a break.
Random team is the default
Most Breaks sell spots and randomize teams after, so buyers aren't stuck waiting for their favourite team.
Trust has to be visible
Buyers need to see the randomizing happen on stream, or it doesn't feel fair.
Sellers already have their tools
A lot of breakers stream with OBS on desktop and use their own randomizer, so we had to fit around that, not replace it.
Scroll sideways · click to enlarge
Since this was an MVP, I didn't want it to be workflow heavy. These apps helped me find the balance: simple and easy to understand, and delightful to watch, like we'd done with Mystery Box.
Breaks come with a lot of new words. Here are the ones that matter, which I also wrote up for the help centre article.
Break lingo · 10 terms
Filling spots
Buyers bid on spots, and teams are randomly assigned.
Ready to Break
Every sold spot has a team. You can start early without selling every team, but once breaking starts, the rest can't be sold.
Breaking
Open the product on LIVE and reveal what each assigned team won.
End Break
The reveal is done and you're ready to pin the next listing.
Team
The team connected to a buyer's spot. Cards pulled for that team go to that buyer.
Available team
A team that hasn't been sold or assigned yet. Available teams can stay unassigned if you end the Break early.
Assigned spot
A buyer's spot with a team assigned to it.
Unassigned spot
A sold spot that doesn't have a team right now, for example after you clear one. It needs a team before you can start or end the Break.
Randomizer
What assigns available teams to buyer spots. You can use Palmstreet's randomizer or your own.
Clear team
Removes the team from an assigned spot and moves the spot back to unassigned, so you can assign another team.
Seller flow
Starting on desktop
We started with Seller Hub, on desktop, because that's where card sellers already are.
Most card breakers stream with OBS from a computer, with cameras pointed at the table. Asking them to run a Break from their phone would have meant asking them to change how they work. So we met them on desktop, and kept every seller control on Seller Hub for the MVP. It also gave sellers more room for something that has a lot going on.
From there, I designed the seller flow first and locked it down, then the buyer flow, then went back through every edge case.
Setting up a Break
Creating a Break starts like any other listing. You pick Break as the selling format, and the form changes to what a Break needs.
Once Break is picked, a few Break-only settings show up:
- Break format
- Random team for the MVP. Each spot a buyer wins gets a team assigned at random.
- Use your randomizer
- Off by default, so Palmstreet's randomizer picks the team. Turn it on to run your own randomizer and select the winning team yourself. You can change this later, even mid-Break.
- Quick spin
- Speeds up the reveal animation, for sellers running lots of spots who want to keep things moving. It doesn't change the result.
- Break teams
- The pool of teams for this Break. Every team becomes a spot.
Then you add the teams. Sellers told us they reuse the same lists all the time, so you can type them in, start from a template like NBA teams, or upload a CSV.
Once the teams are in, you get one list to review. Every team becomes a spot, and the list can be saved as a template for next time.
Seller flow
Running a Break on LIVE
Once it's pinned, the Break gets its own panel next to the stream. It shows how many spots are left, the teams still available, and every spot that's been sold.
When a spot sells, Palmstreet's randomizer picks a team and reveals it to everyone watching, right on the stream.
Seller flow
Choosing their randomizer or ours
Picking a randomizer is a personal choice. Sellers want their show to stand out from every other card seller.
Many breakers run their own games outside Palmstreet, like a spinning wheel or a custom draw, and show them on stream through OBS to reveal the winners. That's part of their brand. So the MVP supports both: Palmstreet's randomizer, or their own.
And they can switch at any stage, even in the middle of a Break. With their own, they run the draw however they like, then assign the result to the buyer's spot in Seller Hub, and buyers see it revealed the same way. Both paths lead to the same place, so clearing, reassigning, starting and ending all work no matter how a team was picked.
Palmstreet's randomizer can also re-run a result. Some sellers play a game called stash or pass, where a buyer who isn't happy with their team can pass and get a new random one. It keeps the show exciting, so sellers can randomize a spot again whenever they need to.
Seller flow
Clearing and reassigning teams
Mistakes happen live. A seller might assign the wrong team, or want to redo a draw. So sellers can clear the team from a spot that's already been sold, and assign a new one using either randomizer.
Rules
Edge cases
Breaks have a lot of moving parts, so I mapped out every state and boiled it down to a few simple rules. Filling can also take a while, so buyers get a notification when the Break starts, even if they've left the LIVE or the app.
Starting early: Sellers can start breaking before every spot sells, as long as every sold spot has a team. Once they do, the remaining spots can't be bought.
Buyer flow
The buyer side
For buyers, a Break had to feel familiar. It lives in the same LIVE screen, with the same bidding, plus a few new moments.
The big one is that you're buying a spot, not a team. So the listing explains that up front, and there's a quick How it works for first timers.
Then comes the fun part: the reveal. And since sellers can clear and reassign, buyers needed to see that too, so nobody's left guessing.
Filling a Break can take a while, so buyers often leave the room. When breaking starts, everyone with a spot gets a notification to come back. After the LIVE, each team shows up as its own sold listing and order.
Visual design
Branding and the reveal
Breaks are a show, so I wanted the reveal to feel like a little moment instead of just a line in the chat. I created the Break card art with ChatGPT, then used Gemini to animate the cards shuffling before the team flips into view. The same card doubles as the default image for any Break listing without a photo.
Final design
The shipped seller experience on Seller Hub, from filling spots to the last reveal.
Outcome and learnings
Outcome
Break just shipped, so sellers can now run random team Breaks on Palmstreet LIVE, with their own randomizer or ours.
Learning a new space, fast
Break was one of the more complicated 0 to 1 projects I worked on at Palmstreet. Understanding all the card selling concepts was a learning curve: spots, teams, randomizers, stash or pass, breakers running their shows through OBS. I learned them by joining Breaks myself and talking to sellers, and shipped the design in 3 weeks. It taught me I can get up to speed on an unfamiliar space fast, and that the best way in is to go use the product the way real people do.
Meet people where they are
Starting on desktop, where breakers already stream, made the MVP easier to adopt than a phone-first version would have been.
Don't replace what's trusted
Letting sellers keep their own randomizer turned a reason to say no into a reason to try it.
Flexibility needs rules
Switching randomizers and reassigning teams anytime only worked because we agreed on a few clear rules for starting and ending.
