My Role
Research – user interviews
Stakeholder interviews
Competitor analysis
Workshops
Prototyping
User Interface Design
Iconography
Specs
Global Style Guide
QA with dev
Working with
UX Researcher
UX Lead
Stakeholders
Project Manager
Development
Tools
Sketch
Marvel
Invision
Zeplin
Duration
6 months
Problem statement
A fragmented and inconsistent experience between the Poker, Casino and Sports brands navigation is causing confusion and mistrust in our customers. Each brand offers a differing experience, contributing to usability issues and frustration .
Mobile web navigation is not easily discoverable nor allows access to content via a single interaction point.
The introduction of the Stars Rewards Loyalty program widget cannot be properly accommodated in the existing header due to lack of space and differing experiences.
The business would like increase new account creations by 15%.
The business would like increase revenue by increasing the number of people making a deposit by 15%.
Discovery
Formulating assumptions about usability pain points
We analysed existing journeys within the navigation and accessed analytics from SEO that indicated the main drop-off points. We then held a brainstorming session to help formulate assumptions about usability pain points and roadblocks for our customers. This helped gauge what we wanted to learn from our customer interviews. This helped form our interview guides.
We headed to the Hippodrome Casino paired up in twos with one person taking notes, the other asking questions.
Analysing the notes, we were able to spot emerging patterns, proving some hypothesises and disproving others. It helped us better understand the pain points and focus on areas for improvement.
In review playback, each team member read out their findings, which were transcribed onto sticky notes and grouped into themes. The process of reading, grouping and discussing helped get everyone’s input and build a shared understanding within the team.
Emerging patterns in our usability studies
Some of the trending patterns emerging in our usability studies started tallying with our customer support interviews with users complaining of difficulty in finding information, varying brand experiences between Poker, Casino and Sports, difficulty in making a deposit and being hard to use on mobile.
Interviews were conducted with stakeholders, product owners, directors and the customer service department who were able to provide vital customer feedback on our existing navigational problems. Leadership placed strong emphasis on promoting Responsible Gaming.
Key Findings
- Discoverability issues
- Inconsistent and fragmented usability issues between Poker, Casino and Sports products
- Outdated look and feel
- Hard to navigate between products
- Difficulty in being able to make a simple deposit
- Too many clicks/ taps to create account
Research
Connection between research insights to design decisions
We were able to create insights from our qualitative user research in four steps.
• Extract and summarise data
• Find patterns across participants
• Create insights
• Organise in digestable formats
From the themes created, we were able to write a user need statement which were organised in digestible research artefacts and presented to product owners, directors and stakeholders to gain their feedback.
From the data and observations, and by asking users a lot of “Why?” questions, we were able to uncover customers’ underlying needs and motivations.
We were able to connect the user insights with business objectives to find actionable insights. These were then used to make informed design decisions – such as size and placement of the “Sign up” and “Deposit” buttons with high contrast colours to increase prominence and visibility. De-cluttering of information, including removal of rarely used links and increasing white space to make the product more usable, discoverable and easy to navigate. Personalising the user experience, and simplifying our core user journeys as far as possible.
We also built customer journey maps and personas around our core users.
Personas – who are our users?
We identified 5 different types of player personas to design for:
• Peter the Player
• Eva the everyday escapist
• Mike the moonlighter
• Emma the relaxation gambler
• Ravid the compliment gambler
Competitor analysis
Competitive analysis was performed on competitors from related and unrelated industries. We reviewed the “Deposit” and “Create Account” journeys and benchmarked them against competitors, identifying focus areas for improvement.
User stories
A list of “must have” user stories were compiled guided by input from product owners and key stakeholders.
Ideation
Gathering ideas and Sketching
After gathering sufficient user research and defining a clear problem statement, we entered ideation to solve a a series of design challenges. To spark innovation, we focused on lateral thinking, inviting stakeholders from all over the business to help generate quantity, rather than quality of ideas. We focused on the users, rather than fixating on what what technically viable.
Each problem was facilitated in the following way:
Short opening statement.
- Clear itinerary with timings
- e.g. introduction (2 mins)
- Ice-breaker activity (5 mins)
- Framing the problem (2 mins)
- Ideation technique 1 (10 mins)
- Ideation technique 2 (10 mins), and so on
Each activity timed by stopwatch and everyone given a pen and sticky notes to showcase ideas.
We asked the following questions:
“How might we increase our new account creations?”
“How might we make making a deposit easier?”
“How might we make content more discoverable?”
“How might we cross-sell Poker, Casino and Sports?”
“How might we make navigating between product verticals easier”
“How might we personalise the user experience?”
“How might we integrate the Stars Reward widget?”
“How might we make promotions more prominent?”
…and so on.
Sketching ideas
Global header navigation sitemap
Global footer navigation
Wireframing, prototyping and user testing
The Solution
Building hierarchies of information
Scalable & future proof design to accommodate new licenses & brands
The Poker, Casino and Sports logos have an equally sized vertical height and spacing to allow easy switching between brands, allowing the business to cross-sell its different offerings. Each brand now has a unified, consistent navigation experience to increase usability. White space has been left should extra brands need to be added in the future.
Promoting responsible gambling & reducing calls to customer service
A high level of emphasis is given to regulatory requirements promoting “Responsible Gaming”, making sure it is highly visible and accessible from any page on the site. It was given text button status (without container), not to distract from nearby content, but still remain prominent. The design helped reduce calls to customer service by linking to an FAQ help centre section and only showing the phone number when customers drill down into page information.
Increasing sign ups
Easily findable “Login” and “Join now” buttons to the top right of the design follows conventional UI patterns, improving discoverability. The button uses strong visual signifiers to make it stand out, including high contrast colour, size and ample whitespace. The high prominence increases visibility, click-throughs and performed very well in testing.
Quickly finding rewards and promotion offers
Research indicated customers wanted to quickly locate promotions and rewards. The “Stars Rewards” and “Promotions” offers have their own highly prominent section. They are accompanied by linear icons to add emphasis and aid visual scanning for information.
Solving discoverability problems with logical categories
One of the biggest complexities of this project was accommodating important information only relevant to specific sections of the site, but allowing it to be easily discoverable. We broke down sections into logical categories using parent and child sub-categories.
To make the navigation simple, discoverable, and accessible, we prototyped a “fat-nav” sub-navigation, which tested very well. It made valuable use of screen real estate, and was hidden when not on focus. This allowed a stripped back, clean and simple navigation and added usability.
Increasing deposits and introducing Stars Rewards widget
Logging in provides the customer with a different view where “Deposit” takes prime location in place of the “Login” buttons. Its size, positioning, and high contrast colour add a strong visual hierarchy, making it the top action in the new navigation.
The Stars Rewards loyalty widget has been placed in a highly visible location and adjusts to responsive screen sizes. Customers can also access their account, account balance and view their username from this view.
Mobile discoverability
The responsive mobile navigation now offers the same discoverability as the full desktop site across any device size. The new navigation adapts responsively and is made up of a series of carefully considered hierarchies of information.
Design approach
The UI was prototyped in Sketch integrated with Marvel and multi-variant tested with users to trial different layout concepts. Results were analysed and learnings applied through iterative design.
Buttons
Old v new buttons style
Iconography
Grids
Columns: 4
Columns width: 64
Gutter width:14
Columns: 8
Columns width: 68
Gutter width:30
Columns: 12
Columns width: 76
Gutter width:30
Navigational hierarchy
Header logos design iterations and decisions
Red underline used to indicate Casino product selected, but user testing reported confusion on which product is selected
We tested removing colour from unfocused logos, but the white text still draws the eye
A further iteration removed colour from logo and text opacity reduced to 80%, but red underline felt too heavy
Sub-navigation
Evolution of the sub-navigation
Rounded grey corners too similar to main CTA style – users reported confusion
Block of red felt clunky and clashed with main green CTA. I wanted to use red sparingly as red is often associated with errors and danger in an industry where customer trust is important
White underline adds premium feel, but doesn’t enforce PokerStars brand colours
Font choice
I chose to implement the highly readable font Roboto as the default for its easy legibility to aid finding navigational elements quickly. This was updated from Roboto Condensed, after observing users squinting during testing and unable to scan quickly for information.
I wanted to set clear hierarchies to highlight the most important information and make navigation quickly scannable. The introduction of new typography and text styles helped increase readability and made information digestible.
Decluttering the UI
The UI was very cluttered and busy to look at – adding to confusion. My approach was led by stripping out any unnecessary UI elements to declutter the interface, removing borders and adding white space where possible. This helped simplify the UI, introducing a clean, flat, modern and simplified user interface. The outcome reflected the brand values of a premium, desirable and trustworthy brand.
Global header
The first global navigation release was for PokerStars Casino site.
Fat-navigation dropdown
Language selection
The website is released in over 60 countries worldwide. This meant one of the main challenges was designing for the localised translations and worst-case scenarios. This meant testing languages in Greek, German and Russian to check the header could accommodate text translations.
Stars Rewards loyalty program
The Stars Rewards widget was re-skinned in the new UI style. Re-designing the entire component was out of scope for this project.
Re-skinning create account dialog
Dialog form design choices
Footer design
Deliver
Global Style Guide
I uploaded screen specs and designed a style guide for dev in Zeplin. This project formed the basis for my next project, which was to build the Stars Group Global Style Guide which would be used as the one source of truth to improve consistency between the PokerStars brands. It brought about an institutional change in the company where Zeplin would be used to style components in React and used across all platforms.
Evaluate
Measuring OKR objectives and key results
Working closely with the development team based in a different time zone, the new global navigation was deployed to a QA testing environment. Through regular meetings, I provided feedback on UI implementation, guidance and support to help to debug the product before the official roll out.
Actions were put in place to monitor, measure and quantify success with google analytics, new account creations, revenue increase, monthly active users and time spent on site.
The business wanted to increase Account Creations by 15%. After deployment analytics showed a 33% increase in Account Creations compared to the year before. The business wanted to increase revenue by increasing Deposits by 15%. Analytics showed a 26% increase in Deposits compared to the previous year, which vastly exceeded expectations.
Usability measurements for satisfaction
Using Usabilla software and surveys on our live site to measure the Net Promoter Score (NPS) we scored a 9 out of 10.
The site continues to be evaluated, with the UX CXD department working closely with customer services to identify areas of improvement.
Learnings
Importance of cross brand consistency
Customers expect a consistent experience across brands without having to re-learn behaviours. It makes finding what they are looking for easier and minimises confusion.
Don’t hide contact information
Though the business would like to decrease enquiries to customer support, it was reported it was one of the most searched for pieces of information. This helped form the basis for a future Customer Support help center and FAQ section to help customers self-serve their enquiries.
Psychology of reinforcing trust
During initial user interviews customers reported online security as a major factor on whether they would interact with a website. A well branded, consistent UI with trust logos and links to responsible gaming helped improve this.
High contrast CTAs
Research showed that by previously changing our CTA buttons from the main red brand colour to a high contrast green improved click through rates by up to 20%. This theme was continued and modernised for the next generation of PokerStars users with the introduction of a new flat green to help increase account creations.
People scan for information
Our eye tracking software showed people quickly scan for information and when icons were placed along text, it helped them visually recognise what they were looking for much faster.
Mobile discoverability
Most people use devices on the go and expect the same experience on a mobile as desktop site. They want to quickly find what they are looking or they’ll drop off and go to a competitor site.
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