User Experience: Lessons from an Unusual Place – Slingo
UX, for those outside the design industry, refers to User Experience, a nebulous phrase that comes down to how easy – and how satisfying – a product is to use. It usually goes hand-in-hand with another acronym – UI or User Interface.
he latter refers to how something looks, its buttons and colours, while UX is the feeling people get from using it. Are users able to find the section they need, or has downloading an app completely ruined their day?
There are plenty of companies engaged in UX/UI design on Deeside, such as H10 Marketing and Voyage Branding, which build websites, and the marketing agency NXTWeb in Cheshire.
We’re going to talk about something with a global reach today, though – a game called Slingo. This unusual product has gone through several facelifts, yet maintains a robust UX despite a potentially tricky mission, i.e. mixing bingo and slots together.
Thunder of the Gods
Slingo maintains an intuitive UI by keeping things familiar. For example, Thunder of the Gods Slingo at Paddy Power stacks slots’ and bingo’s most familiar elements, a reel and a bingo card, right on top of each other.
The game works by adding numbers to a 5×3 reel. The player spins the reel, and any numbers that appear are crossed off the bingo card. Players earn prizes by completing lines (known as Slingos) and, finally, the full house.
Like online bingo, much of the action is automatic, making the sometimes difficult task of getting players onboard easier. There’s no need for the traditional ‘dabber’, and the game moves quickly.
An element borrowed from slots – scatters, or pictures of Zeus in Thunder of the Gods Slingo – can provide wins when they’re found in quantities of 3-10+.
Major Franchises
So, why does UX matt
er? Statistics online paint a good UX design as essential. Creative software giant Adobe claims that 39% of people will abandon content if it takes too long to load. A separate figure claims that 88% of those already turned off won’t come back.
Things get worse on mobile. The UserTesting website complains that mobile web UI remains “poor” even after years in the sun – and even though users are “five times” more likely to give up on something if it’s not optimised for mobile devices. Evidently, good UX isn’t in everybody’s playbook.
There’s more than one way to get new customers (or players, in the case of Slingo) to join in. Thunder of the Gods Slingo is part of a themed package of games created by developer GamingRealms. This includes nods to major franchises.
Deal or No Deal Slingo is inspired by the Fremantle Media franchise that recently (2023) returned to the air with Stephen Mulhern as host. Similarly, the games Book of Slingo and Slingo Starburst get their names from full slot games that precede them.
Of course, none of this supplants UX as key to users’ hearts. If somebody’s struggling to play a game, then the reason for a product’s existence starts to come into question. Asking people to use a product at every stage of development can avoid later pain.
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