Consumer App Innovations: Lessons from the Winners of the 2025 Mobile Appdev Awards

We’ve been running the Mobile Gamedev Awards for a few years at GameRefinery, but you may have noticed that this year, we decided it was time for a new name: the Mobile Appdev Awards. Why the change? With the launch of AppRefinery, Liftoff’s Exclusive Platform for Consumer App Insights, we wanted to spotlight the industry-changing innovations we were seeing in consumer apps. After all, mobile apps and games can learn a lot from each other’s achievements.

Our app awards focused on four categories: Best Feature Innovation, Best Use of Engagement Features, Excellence in Social Features, and Excellence in AI-Powered Features. You can see the complete list of winners and nominees here. Below, we take a closer look at this year’s winners and some key takeaways for both gaming and non-gaming app developers.

Best Feature Innovation: DraftKings

Best Feature Innovation recognizes features that provide an exceptional user experience and push the boundaries of what users can expect from the app’s core functionality. The award went to DraftKings, one of the biggest sports betting platforms in the world, for its highly informative Stats Hub.

The Stats Hub does exactly what it says, providing users with data and statistics to help them make more nuanced betting predictions. These include:

• Line Moves: Changes in betting odds or point spreads that occur as money comes in. They often occur due to spikes in betting behaviour, or due to changes in weather or injuries. Dedicated bettors track them to spot good opportunities as soon as they appear.
• Consistency Sheets: Analytics that track how reliably a player performs against certain statistical thresholds or fantasy point targets. They help identify players who consistently score above a certain fantasy point value, which is crucial for games where stable performance is key.
• Systems & Streaks: Systems are predefined rules for betting or building DFS (daily fantasy sports) lineups, and streaks are patterns of consistently good or bad performance. Bettors might follow a system (e.g., betting on underdogs after a loss) or seek out teams/players on a winning or losing streak.

Takeaways From DraftKings’s Stats Hub

Even if you’re unfamiliar with sports betting apps, it’s easy to appreciate why this would be an essential feature. Most iGaming apps do not offer similarly extensive stats features. It’s an excellent example of a developer looking at the market, seeing an audience need that isn’t being addressed, and seizing the opportunity to build a high-impact feature.

Best Use of Engagement Features: Trip.com

Next up is the award for Best Use of Engagement Features, which spotlights apps that keep users coming back with compelling retention mechanics, personalized journeys, and inventive engagement strategies. This time around, the award went to the travel/booking app Trip.com for its AI-powered travel assistant, the Trip Genie.

Anyone who has booked a holiday will know it’s a multi-step process. Where do you fly from? Where will you be staying? Do I need to book tickets for museums and other attractions? Are there any special regulations or legal forms I must fill out for my destination? 

The Trip Genie is designed to lead users through the process.

The Trip Genie is built directly into Trip.com as a purpose-built assistant, meaning you can ask for a helping hand anytime. It’s not on a third-party site, so it offers users a much more streamlined experience. For example, if the Genie suggests you stay in a specific hotel during your trip, you only have to accept the suggestion to initiate booking. For example, if you were doing this through ChatGPT, you’d be directed to a third-party site and prompted to create an account. Unifying the process on one platform is much more convenient and prevents churn.

Takeaways From Trip.com’s Trip Genie

AI assistants are becoming more common, but only a handful of apps or websites have truly helpful agents that improve user engagement. In time, we suspect that more travel apps will implement this feature, but by being one of the first, many users will see Trip.com as ahead of the curve. With the right features, users are more likely to stick around to see other advanced features come down the line.

Excellence in Social Features: Snapchat

For gaming and non-gaming apps, social features can be powerful tools for boosting engagement. Encouraging users to interact with one another and share their experiences can make the app experience more enjoyable, providing a tangible reason to keep coming back. However, the best demonstration of social features our analysts encountered was Snapchat’s Snap Map.

Snapchat has evolved to become so much more than just a messaging service. With the Snap Map, users can create digital personas in a virtual world, complete with a customizable home. The Snap Map isn’t a new feature—in fact, it’s been around for a while as a utility feature used to share your location with friends and family. However, the ability to show off your personality is a relatively new but welcome addition that adds self-expression to connecting with others.

Takeaways from Snapchat’s Snap Map

Sometimes, developers hesitate to implement new features because they’re worried about the return on investment if the features aren’t a hit. However, Snapchat proves that innovation doesn’t require developing from scratch. Instead of building an entirely new feature, they identified opportunities to enhance an existing winner. It’s a strategy we think most apps can benefit from.

Excellence in AI-Powered Features: Pinterest

Generative AI is everywhere—especially in mobile. Mobile app developers are leveraging AI to enhance user experience in truly transformative ways. One example is Pinterest, for which we awarded our Excellence in AI-Powered Features award. 

Pinterest’s use of generative AI isn’t limited to one feature. In fact, it’s impressive how neatly AI features are implemented across the user journey to improve the overall experience:

• Custom Backgrounds: Pinterest AI users can now generate custom backgrounds for their product images. If you have a plain photo of a chair or something you are trying to sell, the AI can place it in a beautifully decorated room for you.
• Recommendations: Pinterest also added personalized content recommendations. The app learns your tastes and can better tailor your home feed to suit your likes and dislikes.
• Collage Generator: Pinterest introduced creative tools like an AI-assisted collage generator that helps users mash up these different pins to create stylish vision boards. Some reports by Pinterest have shown that these AI-generated collages have tripled user engagement.

Takeaways From Pinterest’s AI Features

Gen AI has a wide range of use cases. If you’re struggling to think of meaningful ways to implement the technology as a new feature, you might be better served by looking at how it can enhance your existing user experience. Sometimes, minor but meaningful enhancements can be highly impactful.

If you liked this article and want to learn more about our 2025 AppDev Awards, check out our other blog post on our gaming winners, or listen to our podcast’s latest episode. 

Or, if you’re ready to learn more about improving your app’s features, schedule a demo with AppRefinery.