Q&A: Casumo product designer Daniel Durrans
Durrans on rising mobile expectations, finding the right design philosophy and the advantages of developing in-house
Casumoâs original mobile product was released almost three years ago with the initial desktop product, but our new mobile web product is a complete overhaul. We started from scratch and rebuilt the product. We broke the whole thing down and outlined what we wanted to focus on. For instance, it is now possible to log in and start playing with one tap. We also found one of the most jarring experiences on mobile is inputting data using a device keyboard, so we created our own custom keypad for inputting numerical data, so now users can deposit and withdraw without ever using the device keypad. It is much, much faster.
Gamification has been baked into the Casumo product from the start. It wasnât just a layer we added afterwards. We have a product which straddles the social and real money worlds. We reward players the more engaged they become which means they get more out of the experience the more they play. It has obvious benefits for us in terms of engagement rates.
We do all our development in-house. At the moment we are looking at our native application strategy and we expect to release something on that front soon. It is part of the culture we have and the strength of our product is the result of our approach. We focus on bringing in strong people and creating the right type of environment for them to work in. We put a lot of trust in people. It means we can be agile and can work very quickly. Design is built into the foundations of Casumo. We have tech founders and design founders, so there is a commitment to doing things the right way.
We have a dedicated mobile team but it doesnât work in isolation. It is very open, with a lot of input from other people, but it is important that we develop a granular level of understanding of the details needed to make a really good product. Â There is still a lot of cross-contamination of ideas.
You have to consider the device when designing for mobile. We need to be aware of how tech is changing and think about the way people are using devices in everyday life. Mobile is exciting because it is changing so quickly, with more and more people playing games on the channel. But the overall quality in the industry is further behind than on desktop, where there has been more time to refine design and performance. With mobile we are still learning, but this means thereâs space for innovation and new types of product. Customer expectations are rising quickly. The days are gone when you could benchmark against your nearest rivals in the casino sector. Now you need to benchmark against the best tech companies out there, and what people expected from their mobile experience in general.