Today most gaming portals offer bingo, casino, games, poker and a sportsbook. Is this the best way? Look at Full Tilt Poker, PokerStars and PartyGaming who promote brands for one kind of game.
For instance players go to PokerStars to play poker, but when you go to for instance bwin, Unibet, Ladbrokes and many more gaming portals it is difficult to know what the player want to play.
Almost all gaming portals offering many different games have a start page where they show their different offerings where the player have to make a choice …

In May I will run a workshop around gaming portals of the future. It will be a very hands on day where you will learn new tools to be able to build better portals.
The workshop will include sections about

User Experience & Agile Development
Prototyping the User Experience
Personalisation: Gaming Portals 2.0
Social Media: Gaming Portals 3.0

More details will be available in the coming weeks. You can sign up here to be notified when the details are ready.
If you have any questions or suggestions for the workshop then don’t hesitate to contact me, staffan.schroder@inuse.se
/Staffan

I wrote about bingo back in the beginning of december, Why do all bingo clients look the same? Where are the innovations?, but there are a few companies doing some innovations.
We have seen Live Casinos (where you play online against a real dealer) for a while and now it is showing up in bingo clients as well. One company doing this is Atac Media.
I think having a real person calling out the numbers will be more fun. The problem is that I couldn’t try it out. The bingo opens at …

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

LAUNCH A GAMING PORTAL, advertise, give players big bonuses.
Today, sadly, that recipe is no longer sufficient if you want keep your players. Gaming operators need to put more focus on the player experience and each aspect of it. Everything from the registration and deposit flows to how the help a player find a game and start playing that game.
Most gaming portals (and software) display the same information, options and games for all their players. But it is now time to take gaming portals to the next level and to start …

Unibet was awarded European Sports Betting Operator of the Year at the EGR Awards this year.
This week’s redesign is about two minor changes making the sportsbook even better for the players.
Sports selection today

Image 1. This is how the sports selection looks today.
Unibet gives the player the option to find the sports to place bets on in a number of different ways, search, quick links and by using the navigation structure.
First suggested change

Image 2. First suggested change before (1) and after (2)
My first change I would do is to remove the …

Cashcade and their Foxybingo.com won the Bingo Operator of The Year 2009 award at the EGR Awards yesterday.
This made me curious about their bingo portal and I went their to register an account to try it out.
But why do I have to give away my credit card details right away? I want to look at the site and bingo client before I do!
Operators need to work on their registration processes to optimize both the benefits for the players but also to get as many as possible to register. I for …

Gaming portals should have a global language library (for each language) where all terms used are stored.
Consistency is a big part of the player experience. Things should behave similar and they should also use the same terminology, especially on the same gaming portal.
In the image above you see an example where it isn’t very consistent. The example is taken from paddypower.com (there are many sites with the same problem) where different names are used for the same thing, even on the same page.
To register at paddypower.com they use the following …

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

Betsafe’s sign up form
When I created an account with Betsafe (Betsafe’s casino page will be next week’s redesign) I noticed something a little bit confusing.
In the image above you can see the Password input field which is mandatory. And below is the the field where you should retype the password. Isn’t that field mandatory? It actually is, but looks like it isn’t!
I see the “Password” and “Retype password” fields as two seperate ones and “Retype password” should also be in bold and have the asterics showing that it is mandatory.
/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 …

Paf’s start page
Paf has a gaming portal which offers all kinds of gaming, but they don’t really use their start page to its real potential. A start page needs to attract players and give them reasons for staying, I think Paf really miss that.
On Paf’s start page they just have navigation items and a few banners.
As you can see they top navigation is: “Home”, “Slots”, “Bingo & Lotteries”, “Casino”, “Dice & Backgammon”, “Poker”, “Betting” and “Skill”.
Below there is a banner “Red dog bonus”, which is also in two places in …

I wrote a blog post giving PokerStars a design advice back in September (read the post here). And today when I played at PokerStars I noticed that they had implemented the solution I wrote about.

PokerStars chat window back in September

PokerStars chat window today
My design advice back in September was “A much better solution would be to let the player just click on the text in the chat window or the “banner” to open up the tournament’s lobby where I can register.” and that is how it works today! Good job PokerStars!
/Staffan