In this week’s 20 minute redesign I’ll look at PokerStars poker lobby.
So make sure you check back on sunday for redesign suggestions.
/Staffan

Image 1.
I play every now and then on Mr Green and I get annoyed every time when I am logging in.
In the image above you see that there are a number of options for you as a player. I usually click on “Login” and expekt to get the login dialogue.

Image 2.
In the Login dialogue there are two options to the question “Do you have an account already?”:

Yes, I have an account
No, I wish to become a member

Since I clicked on the login button the default should be option 1, but …

It would be really cool if players could create their own personalised gaming portal page! I call this a “Player-created portal page”.
Why not create widgets that players can drag and drop around to build their own page? These widgets could for instance be:

My favourite games
My friends
Bonuses
Gaming news
Upcoming bingo tournaments
….

This will give you a strong relationship with the players and a way to communicate about things that aren’t just bonuses and new games. You can supply new cool widgets which will give them a reason to come back more often to …

Expekt.com today
This week the redesign in 20 minutes is about information architecture (IA), meaning how you organise your content in the best way for your players.
When I visited Expekt.com I noticed that they had a new top navigation item called “New Casino”, this confused me a little. What is the difference between “New Casino” and “Casino”? How will the players know which to select?
A player goes to a gaming portal to play games. Why confuse them by not having a clear path for them to find the games?
Expekt.com has three …

This year European I-Gaming Expo by Clarion Gaming takes place in Copenhagen in September.
The programme looks really good and I’m really hoping to be able to attend.
Here are a few of the great topics of this year’s programme:

Start-Up LaunchPad
State of the industry: Winning strategies in today’s business environment – hear CEOs of the leading operators speak
Designing and exploiting analytical tools to build consumers’ profiles, understand better their gaming habits and forecast their future behaviour
Customer focus group
Handset revolution and user experience
Multiplayer and social games: Monetising the communities

Go here for the full EIG2009 …

I follow PokerHeaven on Twitter and today they send the following:
“Don’t forget to sign-up for tonight’s €500 Facebook Freeroll at 18:30 GMT. All the details can be found here -> http://bit.ly/CgBNh“.
To be able to participate in the Freeroll you have to join their Facebook group. This is a great way of using different social media to find new players and also make current players more active.
The only thing that bothers me is that when going to their portal it is very hard to find the information about the Freeroll there. You …

Svenska Spel posted earlier this month their result for Jan – Jun 09. The result was 591 Million Swedish kronor in net profit. This is less than last year (648). Poker was down 16,4% and bingo was down 18,4%.
Playtech is another company in the gaming industry that have reported a result not as good as expected.
I am sure that Svenska Spel and Playtech are not the only companies in the gaming industry having a tough year.
Svenska Spel believes their result is because they have added the ability for players to set gaming …

Today I signed up again at Unibet.com wanting to go over their registration process. The registration flow went smoothly. I just got a little confused when I submitted a username already taken, then I expected that the cursor would be in the username field but it was in the first field so I had to retype my firstname and then move to the username field insted.
The thing that got me interested in the registration flow from the beginning was that when you go to Unibet.com you can start the registration …

I play poker at ParadisePoker.com on a regular basis and today when I wanted to check my gaming history at Sportingbet.
When I looked around on the portal I noticed the Promo page (I was on the Swedish site) and I was surprised that the promos they had their wasn’t personalised after who I was.
For instance there were these promos:

“Welcome to Sportingbet. 300 Swedish kronor bonus for  all new players”
“€500 Sign up bonus”

Why do they have these promos for me when they know that I’ve been a Sportingbet player for a …

Can you design great games and software if you don’t know your players and their goals? In my experience a lot of software are designed without having the players in mind.
Today many companies in the gaming industry don’t dedicate resources for target group analysis, interaction design and usability!
It has up til now been possible to develop software (because gaming companies have made money anyway) where you just add feature after feature without knowing if your players want them and they are often not properly designed when it comes to the user …

Social gaming portals is the future, but how can you get people to visit you more often?
I believe in features giving players the opportunity to play with friends (even friends not already players on your portal) will be the key to have a successfull social gaming portal. Gaming operators will need to focus a lot on this along with being where the players are (for instance on Facebook, Twitter and so on…).
Players want to be able to play when ever they feel like it.
One social feature I’ve been thinking about the …

This week I’ve looked at the Parlay5 bingo client by Parlay. I’ve played on the Rehab Bingo skin.
All bingo clients on the market today looks very similar and they all offer the same things, a bingo client where you can:

Play bingo
Play other games (minigames inside the client or games in new windows)
Chat with other bingo players

I don’t think the online bingo today is as good as it could be and I believe that the bingo software suppliers are afraid to be different from the others on the market. When will …

This weeks 20 minute redesign will be the Parlay Entertainment’s bingo client (Parlay5).
So make sure you check back on sunday for the redesign.
/Staffan

Ryanair consider offering in-air gambling on their flights. I flew home from Venice to Stockholm yesterday with Ryanair and it will be very interesting to see how they will do this. Will they offer it to people playing on their own laptops or will Ryanair hand out gaming devices for their customers to use?
The user experience of the in-air gambling will be the key to a success or failure!
Ryanair have a few challenges with in-air gambling, for instance:

The space for each customer (seat) is very limited, meaning it will be …

I am currently on vacation in Dublin so this week’s redesign is postponed until next sunday.
/Staffan

How can poker become a more social game?
One way would be to offer poker team tournaments!
A team could consist of friends in real life or friends you’ve met online. There are a number of different ways a poker team tournament could be played.
Here are a few suggestions:

A team have a fixed number of members. Each team member plays for a limited time on whatever kind of poker game he likes and you count the winning percentage for each player. You take a fee from every team member when the tournament …

Found a portal or gaming product to be very confusing? Have you had trouble signing up on a gaming portal?
I am looking for suggestions for upcoming “A redesign in 20 minutes“.
Please e-mail at staffan.schroder @ inuse.se with suggestions :)
/Staffan

When I signed up for PokerStars.com I noticed something funny. It happened when I got to step two in the registration process.
In this step I was supposed to enter my personal information but I got very confused when I thought I had to fill out my date of birth, street address and zip code but not my name or e-mail address.
The confusion was all about the asterisk. An asterisk in a form means required, but at PokerStars.com it means optional. The text “* – Optional field” is placed at the …