Recommendation Engine

The most revolutionary slot floor product to ever come be released. It does the work of dozens of analysts and allows slot floor operators to see which machines they should add, remove, move, or reconfigure.

It’s the result of 2 quarters of user research, whiteboarding, prototyping, and design. It was the most demo-ed product at G2E 2019. It’s the software that casinos have been looking for and my team handled it perfectly. From initial meetings with the product team to dozens of phone calls with subject matter experts and users; we were able to produce a game-changing product in 2 quarters.

PROBLEMS TO SOLVE: 1) Help slot operators quickly see the changes their floor needs. 2) Integrate a data analytics software so we can track usage. 3) Explain our reasoning to skeptical slot operators.

HOW I SOLVED THEM: 1) Because this product was brand new, we spent a month front loading user interviews with slot operators. We had countless conversations, formally and informally, to help us set up our ideas for a product. We had an initial idea, we wanted it to be recommendations from the floor. But we needed to understand standard metrics, needs, and pain points with their floor and their current software (if any). Once we gained that understanding, we were able to start whiteboarding. We ran initial concepts by our SMEs on staff before taking the drawings back to our users. We ran through several iterations after multiple conversations with our users. We landed on the appearance in the image above as the final version.

2) Our legacy products were all built in flash and had no user analytics in them. My goal was to implement Pendo into our new products and roadmap. Because our clients are tribal casinos, who do not want their data leaving their land, this posed a unique challenge. How can we get user data from the cloud, if they tribes do not want their data in the cloud? My first step was to get internal stakeholders onboard with the necessity of having user data. After several presentations, I had the support I needed to start socializing the idea with casino leadership. After talking with several casinos and their technical teams, I gained the necessary support. I was able to talk with Tribal Councils to gain their approval as well. I had to define what data would be sent and where, how safe the data would be, and how important it is for us and them. We now have Pendo implemented on our new products and receiving data daily.

3) The casino industry is a unique one, because there are many operators who go with their “gut.” They have been around since before data analytics and have made money due to their expertise and ability to try new things. This was a great challenge for us (Product Team), because we needed to create a product that could show our math. To do that we implemented a collapsible portion of each recommendation that revealed our numbers. Perception in UX is enormous, if people “feel” they can trust the data they will. We had multiple conversations internally and with users as to how best to accomplish that task. We did and it was a great success.