Overview

Faster gameplay! Smaller competition! Greater prize pool!

Introducing Electric Tournaments.
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Electric Tournaments are short multiplayer contests, where users register by paying an initial buy-in. In return, they'll be given a set number of chips, which they can then use to wager in a pre-decided game during the tournament. Based on their performance in the game, players will receive a numerical score that determines their rankings amongst the participants. At the end of the tournament, winnings are allocated to the highest ranked players.

Context

The idea of Tournaments was born from trying to address a problem created from Leaderboards, a type of contest where a user's ranking is directly correlated to how much money they spend. As a result, this creates a self-fulfilling ranking, where users who are able to invest more money into the competition, are the ones that end up at the top of the rankings, thus being more likely to win the prizes.
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Tournaments tries to combat this "rich-gets-richer" model by establishing a level playing field for all players going into the competition. Using a limited number of chips and a fixed buy-in cost, Tournaments reduces the dependency of winning on a user's financial ability, but rather focuses on their actual game performance.

Okay, hold up. Why's it called "Electric"?

The concept of "Electric" gameplay offers a new spin on standard Tournaments by creating a shorter, smaller contest that allows users to engage in competition in a lower risk environment.
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Some key characteristics of Electric Tournaments:
- Users can only participate in one Electric Tournament at a time
- Users select the cost of their initial buy-in
- Competition launches once capacity is reached (no specific start time)
- Users only play one (pre-selected, or randomly determined) game for the tournament
- Prize pool amount is randomized

Placing the First Bet: The Low-Fidelity Sketches

With all this context in mind, the first challenge was figuring out how to balance Electric Tournaments in conjunction with standard Tournaments, and the previously existing Leaderboards as well. I experimented with a few different ways to display these competitions within the "Competitions" page.

A. Horizontal + Vertical Scrolling

B. Sorting/Filtering

C. Categories in Navigation

Out of this initial brainstorming, I realized my main concern was to maintain visibility of all of the ongoing tournaments. Especially since users can only register for one Electric Tournament, this risks leaving many possible empty states in the app. Particularly with options B and C, users are only shown one type of tournament, which can cause the other type to be forgotten if users do not actively search for it.

Thus, the creation of the "My Competitions" page, and the use of contrasting scrolling for the final low-fidelity sketch:

Design Rationale:
- Registration is directly accessible from "Tournaments" page
- Dynamic registration cards limits user to register for only one Electric Tournament
- "My Competitions" page contains all of a user's participating competitions (Electric, Standard Tournaments, and Leaderboards)
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The "Tournaments" page uses both horizontal and vertical scrolling to differentiate between Electric and standard ("Global") Tournaments, and helps to enforce the idea that a user can only select one buy-in for an Electric Tournament at a time.

This also allows both types of tournaments to be simultaneously visible on the screen, allowing the user to easily register for any of the ongoing tournaments, while keeping the Electric registration at the forefront of their attention.

The registration cards also contain the game to be played, or a randomize icon if this is to be decided later.

Waiting for the Electric Tournament to start:
After a user completes registration, this section collapses into a summary card in its "waiting stage", acting as a reminder to the user of their registration. This card is also now added to the "My Competitions" page.

The status of the tournament's participant count is indicated by the following progress ring in the summary card, which updates as more users join the Electric Tournament:

Additionally, we wanted the users to be able to leave this screen, but be able to monitor the progress of the tournament, which led to the introduction of a change in the navigation icon during this process:

This choice maximizes both familiarity, since navigation changes are already utilized in the app, and consistency, as it does not obstruct the user's view as they switch between the different pages.

Of course, not every design is perfect on the first try. I explored a few other ways to notify a user during the waiting stage:

Push Notifications

Stickied Banner

Ultimately, the navigation change was the best decision due to its visibility and cohesiveness with the app's existing design.


During the Tournament + Summary Cards:
After a tournament fills up, it immediately launches by opening a spinner to determine the prize pool amount (and the game that the users will play if they registered for a random one). The summary cards then update to include the current tournament information, as well as a glowing ring that acts as a timer.

These cards have an option to expand for more information, as we wanted to maximize the number of competitions that are displayed on each page. Especially with something so time-dependent like Electric Tournaments, limiting the amount of information displayed helps to maintain easy scannability and quick entry into the game.

Tournament Summary

Player Rankings

Game Information

Having the pieces all built out, I pieced together my final flow from pre-registration to the conclusion of an Electric Tournament.
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The final flow:

As this was my first exposure to industry-level design, this experience was undoubtedly challenging, but also extremely creatively fulfilling. Especially going in with little knowledge of the casino industry, I struggled with designing for a product I was unfamiliar with at first. However, I learned a lot in the process, growing as a designer both professionally and personally.

Some key takeaways:
1. Designing for an unfamiliar product can be scary, but rewarding: Getting to be a part of the initial ideation and brainstorming for this new concept was exciting! Not only was I able to sway the direction of the project, but I learned a lot about the logistics that go into developing a completely new feature, such as preparing work to present to leadership, or thinking about all of the unique ways to display content. While this made conducting competitive research difficult (due to the lack of existing similar products), it also gave me much more creative freedom to explore different interactions.

2. Being more proactive as a designer: One of the main mistakes I made was not reaching out as much as I could to others, particularly when I was feeling stumped with my designs. Leaning on other designers helped me enormously, and I can only imagine how much more progress I could have made if I initiated this earlier.

Lastly, thank you to Aaron, Brian, and Matt for their endless patience and valuable feedback. I'm grateful for the space to be curious and inconsequentially creative, and I learned so much from my first internship.