A highlight of recent work

Faced with a major shift in the direction of the company; most distinctly by entering into a wider range of entertainment business ventures such as Bodog Fight, Bodog Music and Bodog TV, I was called upon to conceptualize how the website and brand should be adapted to encompass the changes.

Goals for the site/business:

• Show the company as it is seen internally - as a digital entertainment company that does more than gambling
• Differentiate ourselves further in the industry
• Create an entry experience that educates visitors as to "what we are" while making the promise of the lifestyle we are selling and achievable reality
• Create a more contemporary experience, following web 2.0 principles
• Create an adult community and social interaction framework
• Make part of the experience viral to gain word of mouth marketing exposure

We took a creative approach to the delivery of a Creative Concept Document. In essence, we established a storyline that suggested that one year in the future, the impact of our new website was so great that Fast Company decided to dedicate an entire issue of their magazine solely to Bodog. The magazine contained each concept, wrapped up in beautiful designs and evocative articles.

A major goal of this approach was to create some buzz around the company while providing a reading format that was both physical and portable and worthy of discussion.

The product framework is a specification that defines the required component parts of any web based product. It serves 3 main purposes:

• Defines what a product should include in order to be complete
• Enables analysis of a products' comparative state of completeness
• Enables a consistent approach to product development, especially in the situation where there are multiple core products in an organizations structure

The concept for Team bodog was to create a community network showing how a player could progress from being a regular online player to the apsirational goal of being a full-time or proffesional player. The first phase was to focus on 3 levels of player:

1. The Bodog Pros
2. Featured Players - second tier contracted players
3. Any online player who has qualified for a major live tournament with Bodog

As soon as a player qualified for a live event, they would receive a personal profile page. This profile would provide them with exposure and over time would present highlights in the form of blog articles (video, phots and copy) describing their experiences at the event. Each subsequent event visited would add to their profile and presence.

The effect of providing players with a visible space on the site is to increase player retention, while helping to make the aspirational desires of other players seem more attainable.

There were three major goals for this project:

1. Expose new potential customers to the quality of the poker product and its innovative design qualities
2. Educate existing players about new features
3. Bring existing players back to the website where they can be exposed to new messaging and offers for retention

One problem with a downloadable poker product is that players will often not return to the website after they have downloaded. To alieviate this we inserted a promo are into the software to direct players to anything new. In particular to alert them to changes in the software features they should be aware of.

The features section takes a graphically rich and innovative product and exposes it to visitors that may like to know "what's inside the box" before commiting to a download. Using contemporary designs and a humorous tone we elevated the visual persona of the product to further distingh it from the competition.

Early analytics show that visitors were very receptive to the architecture of the section, following the designed path through the feature specification, an important element of web based products, based on section #9 of the product framework.

Most gambling websites have a girls section. I guess sex sells. For the Bodog site we wanted to do something a little different; both classy and interactively upscale. In the full photo view we had a navigation problem to solve. I didn't want to line up the standard previous and next links at the top or bottom of the page, or resort to a small collection of thumbnails below the main image - wasting precious space.

To solve this, I decided on using the two halves of the photo to navigate back and forth. Bear in mind, this was pre LightBox, so I'd yet to see this being done, presenting an interesting challenge of innovation, as no common precedents had been set in the popular web space.

To solve this, we tried inserting instructions on the default screen, that would disappear once you interacted with it. After a few rounds of usability testing around the office we moved to the current Lightbox technique of having permanent labels on either side.

I was unhappy with leaving permanent labels there as it interfered with the photos too much and from observation, we could see that people tried to click the labels rather than the entire half of the picture area which made the easy navigational concept redundant (as it often is with Lightbox if you watch people use it). In the end, we settled on having a floating persitent flash label that lets you know you can click anywhere and worked 100% of the time with test subjects. Go visit the site and try it out.