Image 1. PokerStars tournament lobby.

I’ve enjoyed playing a tournament at PokerStars tonight. But since I pay a lot of attention to details when it comes to the user experience when I play I noticed something I think PokerStars can do better.

There is a little banner area in the top right of the tournament lobby view, which is good real estate.

I was surprised to see that PokerStars didn’t use this area to promote relevant information. In the middle of the tournament I saw an ad for “Extended Registration Available” but if you look in the middle you can see that the tournament registration was closed.

Why not take the opportunity to place a more relevant banner there for instance an upcoming tournament.

When you design the user interface you need to cover all the different states the element can occur in.

/Staffan