Last night I tried to sign up at 888.com to play casino. It wasn’t the easiest thing to do. The registration form is pretty straight forward but the thing that made me get stuck was the password field. In the images below you see what it looks like.
Today

Image 1. Password fields

Image 2. Help information for password field
What was really confusing and took a while for me to discover was that the password have to be exactly 8 characters long. There are a few things that add to the confusion:

You don’t get …

Gaming VC, an online gaming company with brands like Casino Club, Poker Kings and Betaland, said they will invest up to €7 million during 2010 to build the new businesses.
The have hired former PartyGaming marketing chief Jon Salmon and former Sportingbet head of sportsbook Jim Humberstone for the expansion.
It will be interesting to see if they will use some of the funds to design a great player experience around their offering or if everything will go towards marketing costs.
I believe focusing on the player experience and find ways that will let the …

This year’s International Gaming Expo (IGE), incorporating ICEi, is over and I’m back home. My reflections from the expo are mixed.
Most positive: I was impressed by Net Entertainment and  Betsoft’s games. The quality in their games is really good. It is especially interesting to see that Betsoft incorporate their controls as a part of the game.
Most negative: The Innovative Showcase (it was a new addition addition to IGE 2010 that gave exhibitors the opportunity to present to IGE visitors) was a major dissapointment! Many of the presenters didn’t even show up for their presentations, …

It really doesn’t matter to which operator in online gaming you play with today. Gaming portals are very similar when it comes to everything from available games, user flows to registration and deposits. Bingo clients almost look identical from one provider to another. Why is that? Are software providers afraid to differentiate themselves by innovation?
I think that winners in the industry the next couple of years will be operators and software providers that put a lot of focus on the player experience. This is because you can have a really …

NordicBet has launched a new download casino from Net Entertainment.
I was really excited about this and wanted to try it out as fast as possible since Net Entertainment produce really good games.
But I was really disappointed when I went to NordicBet’s portal to download the client, I found the download page but it doesn’t say what the system requirements are.
I’m usually on a mac and tried to download it on my mac. This didn’t work very well so I guess you need a PC to get it to work.
NordicBet could …

This year’s IGE is just a few weeks away and I’m starting to get excited about the event. It will be great to find out what will be the next big things in the igaming industry this year.
I believe the following topics (among others) will be very important for igaming companies this year:

personalisation
social media
retention
focus on the player
prototyping
innovation
development processes

I’ll be at the IGE all days so if you want to meet up and discuss igaming and user experience. I’m also working on a workshop covering many of the topics above that …

Do you develop gaming software?
Do you prototype?
If you do prototyping then great! If you don’t, then it is time to start doing it!
A prototype is a representative model of the final product.
Why should you build prototypes?
Prototyping is an interative and generative process. You’ll never get the best solution at your first try. Prototyping will give you many new ideas when you work through the prototyping process. It helps you get your ideas into something everyone can play around with. This will generate lots of feedback and ideas for new and …

It is just a little over a month left until the International Gaming Expo takes place in London between the 26th and 28th of January.
It will be very interesting to find out if there are any new innovations within the industry. Maybe some new mobile solutions? Or maybe a new poker game?
Will I see you there? I’ll be there for the whole three days this year. Wanna meet up and discuss user experience, social media and igaming?
Send me an e-mail, staffan.schroder@inuse.se, and let’s set up a meeting :)
/Staffan

People like to be around other people for many different reasons, for instance be part of a group or be recognised for their skills.
Playing on a multiplayer slots you either play against or with other players.
The design of the slot needs to be very different if it is a slot where you play WITH or AGAINST other players.
Building communities around multiplayer games where you play together will be a big part of the future gaming portals. Just look at Zynga and all their different games on Facebook and other platforms. They …

Image 1. 8 steps to start playing Black Jack.
This week’s redesign is just one quick and fast design implementation to Betsafe’s gaming portal.
My design advice to Betsafe is, Let players stay on the same page after logging in!
Today players are redirected back to the start page when they log in . In image 1 you see the steps for a player going to a Black Jack game without signing in. Then the player signs in and is redirected back to the start page and have to find the game again. …

Why not sign up for the weekly UXiGaming newsletter?
The newsletter will be sent every tuesday starting December 1st.
Why should you sign up? You’ll get a newsletter containing:

Blog posts posted last weeks along with comments and relevant links.
Links to industry news concerning igaming, social media and user experience.
“UXiGaming’s weekly offer”
“Question of the week”

So sign up right now! You do it here!
/Staffan

I believe that social fatures and personalized content will play a very big part in for the gaming experience in the next couple of years.
Today many instant games just opens up in a new window when you play them with no content around it. To make the gaming experience much better we need to add relevant content.
In my concept design above (done for a presentation a year ago) every game has its own “game home” where there are relevant content on the page. The game can be played within the …

mr Green won the prize as the best gambling site last night at Internetworld’s Top 100 Award Cermony (link in Swedish). In the overall list mr Green came in the 6th place, congratulations to everyone at mr Green!
A part of Internetworld’s motivation read:
“Mr. Green is the style and remains the most exciting gaming site. The vibrant graphics and the unique, social functions, based on this site makes us really eager to play! ….. It’s fun (and rare) with a transparent casino where the team behind the brand are visible. And the …

Net Entertainment produce really good browser based casino software and is used by many online casinos.
The problem I see is that many of the online casinos using Net Entertainment’s games look very similar when it comes to displaying the games. I am sure that Net Entertainment supply some nice widgets and API’s for the online casinos to use but it looks like online casinos today just use what they get.
In the list of images below you see five online casinos (24hPoker, Bet24, BetClick, Betsafe, Betsson, NordicBet). Can you see place the right image with the right …

Good news for me! It looks like I will be attending EIG 2009 in Copenhagen 15-17 of September. Are you going to? And want to discuss user experience and igaming then let me know!
Send me an e-mail, staffan.schroder @ inuse.se :)
/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 …

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 …

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 …

There is a difference between a portal offering games in the browser or games played in a downloadable client.
If you offer a downloadable client then your goal on the portal is to get players to download the client. The goal is very different when you want players to be able to find and play games instately on the portal.
I think that Casino Club has missed that. The instant games portal is just a copy of the download version. A portal for instant games must be “alive” and not static. Therefor …

This weeks 20 minute redesign will be the portal page of the newly released instant casino from Casino Club.
So make sure you check back on sunday for the redesign.
/Staffan