“It’s More Than Design, It’s Building Trust” — A Conversation on UX with Everi’s Design Leaders

User experience (UX) has become a critical differentiator in gaming, hospitality, and payments. But what does “great UX” look like, and how does it drive real results for casino operators?

We sat down with Francis Keyser, Everi SVP Product (Mobile/Web, Fintech UX, and Loyalty), and Bob Zubkoff, Everi Design Director UX/UI, to talk about how Everi approaches UX, why it’s central to product strategy, and how small decisions can drive measurable impacts.

Q: What role does UX play in a user's first impression of a product?

Francis:

Typically, a first impression is visual. So, product marketing and design psychology play a big role in what user experience is. It’s all an effort to tell the consumer what the product is and what value it provides them. Visually, it should be pleasing and something you are drawn to use.

For example, you go to a grocery store; think about all the different laundry detergents and how each container is a different color or shape. When you touch them, they have different textures, each has an aroma ... Each sense is a part of that user's experience – an effort to relay what the brand is and the experience you're going to have using the product, without even opening it first.

Even if it’s a product you ordered online and had shipped to you, UX speaks to all those visual tactile impressions you will get from the entire online experience, including the delivery method and the box it arrives in. If the box is damaged by the carrier, you lose trust in the seller, although it was out of their control.

Bob:

A user will form their opinion around the product in the first seven seconds of interacting with it and their first impressions are 90% design related.

A good analogy here would be hopping into a car for the first time during a test drive. Do you know how to start the car, or do you have to look around for the button or the key? Essentially, if you go in and sit in that vehicle for the first time, good UX will intuitively let you know where everything's at without running into any friction or confusion.

Q: UX can be more than just visual design, however. How does a good UX go beyond the initial aesthetic aspects?

Bob:

Whether it’s a physical or digital product, it needs proper navigation. When someone interacts with it and they’re not sure where to go, it starts to create user friction. If that’s a first impression of the product, it may be a bad experience and lead to abandonment. 

As a designer, you can’t ignore slow loading times or accessibility – we test for color blindness, font sizes, contrast checks, etc. all prior to development. If a user is encountering errors that do not give clear guidance on how to come to a solution, they’re likely to give up and move on.  A good UX builds trust and a positive emotional connection. When a product is reliable and easy to use, users feel more satisfied and are more likely to return.

Francis:

A lot of it comes from psychology; how we interact with objects or people and how we physically interpret data. You must have a balanced approach across a person's suite of senses.

Design is part of UX, but UX is about the full journey. It’s how a product looks, feels, functions—and even smells. Sounds odd, I know, but I’ve worked on products where the packaging, the sound, even the texture of the box was focused on as much as the product being sold. That first impression sets the tone for the entire experience.

If I’m interacting with a product and can't trust it to do these simple things for me – to make the auditory, visual, tactile, olfactory experience, etc. good – how can I expect it to actually deliver on the promise of what the product says it can do?

Q: What are some best practices for UX design in the gaming space?

Bob:

Over the last couple of years, we've embedded user testing into product as part of our design process. So, when we're working through a new product or a new feature, it's pretested before it goes into development. That’s where we're able to identify any issues during the design phase that might have caused problems for us. Within testing, with as little as five users, you can usually identify around 90% of the biggest problems within your UX.

Outside of that, it's about creating design systems. We're currently in the phase of creating libraries and components that can be shared between various FinTech products. For example, we find an efficient flow for withdrawing an amount of money from a wallet or making a transaction – we regularly test these flows, and, for similar use cases, we can keep that in our library and reuse it. Consistency in design and behavior across the product means users can learn how to use it quickly and feel confident about what to expect.

Francis:

The great thing about working in our industry, while overseeing both UX and product, is the amount of data available. The micro-interactions and gamification aspects are functionally part of the UX and make it easier to define “personalization” for the end user. It falls under “UX” but is more contextual design for different sets of users.

This leads to certain questions during our design process, such as: “am I presenting the right information to this user set and how am I determining that?” If we’re talking about a mobile app, we can use geofencing to help determine how to present information in the right manner. It wouldn’t make sense to present a hotel key card immediately after a user opens the app if they’re not on site. In that case, we’d prefer the flow to lead the user to a different set of options: booking the hotel stay or an on-property experience.

For me, it’s not just personalization by the individual, it's also personalization for how you're using each given channel. For example, if we have scannable QR codes on property to help increase user adoption for our digital CashClub Wallet® technology, we don’t want to immediately present users with a Loyalty sign up, that wouldn’t make sense within our flow.

So, it's about knowing the way the data's coming in and what we should be contextually showing.

Q: Speaking specifically about Everi, are there any examples of how altering the UX led to an enhanced product?

Bob:

Sometimes you have transparent data where you can leverage UX design to meet a stated goal, such as increasing the number of transactions on our financial access products. We recently updated the charity module on our ATMs and saw a dramatic improvement based on our changes to the interface. Due in large part to this, we saw nearly a 200% increase on charitable donations over a 12-month period.

Another example, on the gamification point and also specifically on mobile, we now use things like a tier-bar animation. So, when a user logs into their account, there's a progress bar that can fill up to drive them to play a little bit more or motivate them to achieve a certain goal to reach the next tier.

Francis:

We’re willing to put our money where our mouth is when it comes to selling our products and their performance against the competition. That is because of our quality of the engineering, the sturdiness of the hardware, the research and testing of the UX flows, and our products team's alignment to always provide Patron and Operator value. These ingredients come together to create best in class products.

So, while we lean on UX processes for gamification, we also utilize it for Loyalty functionality and to create a full suite of marketing tools within our products. To help engage casino patrons,  our JackpotXpress® suite incorporates all of those aspects, which helps turn a 30-minute hand-pay process into mobile experience that can be completed under five minutes. It’s because we put that investment in it from all directions. It’s not only good UX, it allows for increased game uptime and a better overall player experience on the gaming floor.

Q: How do you balance design for both novice and tech-savvy users, especially in gaming?

Bob:

If we're implementing a new feature for our promotional kiosk or for mobile, something where you have a wide range of users, I want to design that experience so that someone who comes into the product for the first time is able to get through their tasks successfully. We will do random test pools on patron-facing products so most of those test results are coming from people who have never seen that product before.

We must keep in mind the UX for the back-of-house or operator-facing products as well. In that case, the testing there is working directly with the clients or with people who are much more familiar our products. So, we rely a bit more heavily on product team and client input to drive our UX changes.

Q: What’s next in Everi’s UX strategy?

Francis:

We want to continue to find ways to be as consistent as possible with branding and UX-language given all the product categories that we compete across. During meetings at tradeshows, people will tell us that our one-brand language resonates well throughout our product lines. We think that’s true for both operators and patrons.

When we talk about end users utilizing our products, we want them to see the Everi brand and have an inherent belief that this is something they can rely on. It may be more subliminal at times, but it helps build brand awareness and trust.

Bob:

As we continue to grow with more of our products integrated into each other and available through different channels, brand consistency is increasingly important. As our mobile teams build solutions that integrate various FinTech products, we are looking at the language and user flows to make sure all products are tailored to Everi’s brand and consistent from a UX standpoint.

Want to see how UX impacts performance on your floor? Please reach out to one of our Everi Sales Representatives on how Everi’s products and services can assist you in your operations.