LUKE ANDERSON
XR Design, Creative Strategy, Direction & Leadership
CASE STUDIES
HIGH FIDELITY, LOW FRICTION
WHO: DoubleDown Interactive
ROLE: Director of Creative Department
WHAT: Create an app enabling video-slot-jackpot players to easily find their favorite slot games. Accommodate various device screen sizes, aspect ratios, and pre-existing slot game features.
OUTCOME: Consistent 4 star ratings in app store. High marks in Usability & Focus Group sessions. Reduced impact on engineering resources.
GETTING THE GREEN LIGHT
CASE STUDY: CREATING THE OPPORTUNITY FORÂ ELLEN'S ROAD TO RICHES SLOTS
CONTEXT: ​
The opportunity to create a licensed casual-slots product based on The Ellen Degeneres Show seemed like a no-brainer. It would be a natural progression considering DoubleDown’s parent company at the time, IGT, already had physical slot cabinets, featuring the Ellen brand, being played in casinos all over the world. However, the opportunity faced some significant resistance.
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OBJECTIVE:
The request from DoubleDown's VP of Product was to convey a clear product vision to win hearts and minds of the Warner Bros. executive producers.
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APPROACH:
The DoubleDown Creative team enacted the following strategy in preparation for a pitch meeting with Warner Bros. in Burbank.
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Assemble a small strike team with clear mandate to create materials designed to authentically persuade stakeholders from a position of ‘No’, to ‘Yes’.
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Create a detailed, compelling, pre-visualization piece that captures ‘the promise’ and potential of the product, including show integration opportunities.
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Sketch the product features in enough detail that the stakeholders can ‘play through it in their heads’ and imagine the fun, the tone, and the spirit of the product.
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Support the pre-visualization material with solid data, and easily digestible research.
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RESULTS:
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The stakeholders concerns were addressed, and they were moved and inspired by the pre-visualization materials. They shifted their position from a ‘No’, to… ‘Maybe’.
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The pitch meeting created a small but significant opening resulting in a continuing interest, engagement and conversation about the deal.
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The Creative Team's rapid iteration methods led to quick revisions for addressing specific feedback.
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After another presentation round and further due diligence, the stakeholders delivered a ‘Yes’. We received the Green Light.
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The game shipped less than a year later.
HIGH FIDELITY, LOW FRICTION
CASE STUDY:Â DOUBLEDOWN FORT KNOX SLOTS
CONTEXT:
Continuing to expand the product line, the strategy called for an app catering to a specific market segment, the video-slots jackpot player. While there are many, many successful aspects of this product to be proud of, this case study will focus on The Main Lobby Slots Selection Screen.
OBJECTIVE:
Create a high-fidelity, accessible game to showcase a library of AAA video-slots content and fulfill player’s fantasy of hitting massive jackpot payouts.
APPROACH:
The Creative Team had become adept in the Unity engine and was eager to deliver a modern, elegant slots experience. Since we had access to some of the best slots content in the world, my initial direction for the main lobby selection screen was to ‘make the content large and in charge’. The concept artists came back with a glitzy, high-class, modern casino interior with idealized representations of physical slot cabinets prominently showcased. It was lush and beautiful, however, the skeuomorphic approach had a lot of limitations. I encouraged the team to explore oblique strategies that would address the following considerations:
convey excitement and showcase character faces whenever applicable
ease of accessibility, elegant and uncluttered menu
show jackpot-information persistently
secondary-info contextually displayed
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Results
The Creative Team designed a solution that featured:
attractively designed tiles, elegantly-animated with parallax layers
pre-existing attract assets integrated into a systematized content pipeline
content arranged into a modular grid layout with responsive layout for portrait and landscape on multiple devices
prominent, familiar jackpot visual-language
This approach presented the slots in a familiar, but tantalizing way that was very user friendly. This solution tested very well in usability sessions.