The track started with an exhaustive benchmark of international competitors and assessing their gameplay. We saw some interesting takes on mobile draw games interfaces.

One of the biggest discoveries was using the grid solely as the input element. This allowed for better use of screen real estate.

The old interface required a lot of confirmation of the players. When starting a new grid,... when saving a row,... when adding a new grid. The whole process felt more like a chore than a game.

I combined the 'grid as input' with an easy overview element. This allowed the player to stay in control, while we automated the flow for a more fluid experience. As I kept iterating over the idea more and more got optimized for mobile.

Before pitching this idea to the client, I needed to make sure we could expand on this concept. They had 5 different draw games and up to six play variations. 

The initial concept only focused on the 2 biggest draw games and one play variation (90%+ of revenue). To easily create and visualize ideas I created paper variations of all the interface elements that allowed me to quickly assemble ideas and compare to others.

Once the concept was really clear in my head, it was hard to communicate the flow to the design lead. Most of the steps were taken out and important parts of the flow were animated to help inform and reassure the customer during gameplay.

I decided to create a prototype that would allow the different stakeholders to experience the gameplay. It looked like a wireframe, but the animations, reactiveness, and states were all optimized.

Once the different stakeholders got a hold of the prototype they immediately understood how it would work. They even had a big enthusiastic reaction and kept reloading and playing with the prototype. A big hit was the animation of the flashing numbers when playing 'Quickpick'. (Quickpick was 80% of number selection at that time).

Once the stakeholders understood and felt how it would work, it was very easy to explain the different game variations. After the second variation, they started to think along and it was clear to the whole team that the concept would work. It was just a matter of translating the variations in the concept.

The other draw games left less room for automation but still fit into the concept. They did not have the same benefit from the concept. The games however are more complex and aimed at specialty players. We simply translated the games and got out of their way.

After weeks of building an extensive prototype, we held both a qualitative and quantitative user test. The organization and facilitation of the tests were done by independent specialized teams. This provided us with neutral results.

We had a broad audience and tested on mobile and tablet. The testers were encouraged to use their own device. We had great acceptance results, but the biggest rewards come from the testers themselves.

"I always have to go upstairs to play on my desktop computer. As soon as this is released, I'll no longer need my computer. It's all I use it for, everything else I can do on my tablet".​​​​​​​

With some minor improvements from the user testing, I started working on the functional analysis. As the development was outsourced to a nearshore company both the game rules and the gameplay needed to be extremely clear. I remember it took a full day just to organize the approach and structure of the functional analysis. Having worked together with the internal developers in a more loosely agile approach I was able to anticipate the more complicated parts.

I have no final numbers on how much engagement and revenue increased. I left the agency before the release of the new gameplay. I have poked around to get numbers. All I got was 'a significant' or 'remarkable' increase.

The initial animation of the numbers flashing when choosing Quickplay got dropped. I have no idea when and how this decision got made. I still consider it an important part of the experience, based on the enthusiastic reactions we got from stakeholders and users testing the prototype.