John Lewis

Product Design Leadership

Market story board

Market story board

Commercial Product Leadership

Designing Across a Casino Growth Portfolio

How comparing results across reward formats, operator workflows, and platform infrastructure informed commercial choices.

Leadership Question

How do you compare customer, operator, and platform results to guide commercial priorities?

Commercial StrategyGrowthOperationsPlatform

Case at a glance

Leadership scope and evidence

The leadership practice was to compare different commercial outcomes, connect customer and operating decisions, and keep conclusions proportionate to initiative-level results.

Leadership role
Product design leadership across growth-critical casino initiatives
Timeframe
Multi-year portfolio
Team
Product, design, engineering, analytics, CRM, marketing, operations, and executive partners
Scope
Reward formats, promotions, operator workflows, support efficiency, and platform infrastructure

Reward Machine Bonus Draw

+18% NGR

Recorded against control alongside +22% higher eGGR.

Bonus-spin CS contacts

69% fewer

Bonus Spins Merch also recorded 17% higher bonus-spin usage.

Tax savings

$500K / month

Recorded for Casino Bonus Wallets alongside foundational reporting capability.

Executive summary

Casino growth depended on decisions across customer, operator, and platform work, not one feature. Reward formats changed participation and revenue. Merchandising changed usage and support demand. Operator workflows changed campaign speed. Platform investments changed financial and reporting capability.

Challenge

The commercial opportunity was distributed across many initiatives.

The work required comparing customer, operator, and platform results without collapsing them into one growth claim.

Each initiative began with a different constraint. Some asked which reward format would perform better. Others asked why customers needed support, why campaigns took too long to configure, or what reporting and wallet foundations the business needed.

I led design across these growth-critical initiatives and used their local results to inform priorities. Together, the results revealed differences among customer, operating, and platform investments within a broader commercial effort.

Business context

Three lenses for comparing commercial results

Reward formats, operating workflows, and platform foundations each changed a different part of the business equation.

Customer-facing experiments tested whether format, anticipation, and merchandising changed participation or revenue. Operator work focused on campaign setup, testing, and support demand. Platform work addressed reporting, wallets, and capabilities that could serve many initiatives.

Comparing them in one view made those differences useful. It gave partners a way to weigh immediate launch results against operating efficiency and longer-lived infrastructure rather than treating every initiative as the same kind of win.

Approach

Making growth choices from initiative-level results

Each result stayed with its initiative, while patterns across the work informed where to invest next.

Test

Compare reward and merchandising choices

Used initiative-level comparisons to understand changes in revenue, participation, sentiment, usage, and support demand.

Enable

Design for the people operating the product

Included setup time, testing, support, and release quality in decisions about growth mechanics.

Invest

Build foundations with repeat value

Prioritized templates, wallets, and reporting capabilities when they could improve more than one campaign or market.

Decision

Why it mattered

Outcome

Treat reward format as a commercial variable

The same value could produce different behavior depending on how anticipation, choice, and feedback were structured.

Reward Machine Bonus Draw recorded +18% higher NGR and +22% higher eGGR than control.

Treat comprehension and operator effort as growth constraints

A mechanic lost value when customers needed support or teams needed excessive time to configure and test it.

Bonus Spins Merch recorded 69% fewer related CS contacts and 17% higher usage, while workflow initiatives reduced setup and testing time.

Fund platform work when its value exceeded one surface

Wallet and reporting foundations could change financial and operating capability across many initiatives.

Casino Bonus Wallets recorded $500K in monthly tax savings and unlocked foundational reporting.

+18%

NGR vs. control

Reward Machine Bonus Draw also recorded +22% higher eGGR than control.

69%

Fewer CS contacts

Bonus Spins Merch also recorded 17% higher bonus-spin usage.

$500K

Monthly tax savings

Casino Bonus Wallets paired financial value with foundational reporting capability.

Artifacts

Comparing commercial outcomes in one view

The artifact organized business questions, initiative decisions, local measures, and broader implications.

Executive market story board

Executive market story board

Measured impact

Different decisions produced different kinds of value

The case combines initiative-level results across revenue, participation, support efficiency, operator speed, and infrastructure.

Outcome

Reward Machine Bonus Draw recorded +18% higher NGR and +22% higher eGGR than control.

Outcome

A branded bonus-spin launch recorded +363% daily active players for the named game and market.

Outcome

Bonus Spins Merch recorded 69% fewer related CS contacts and 17% higher bonus-spin usage; other workflow initiatives reduced setup and testing time.

Outcome

Casino Bonus Wallets recorded $500K in monthly tax savings and unlocked foundational reporting capability.

Director Signal

Leadership signal

A commercial growth story becomes more useful when leaders compare revenue, participation, operating effort, support demand, and infrastructure value without turning them into one oversized claim.

What We Learned

The leadership lessons that carried forward

The strongest case studies leave behind more than shipped work. They sharpen the operating principles behind future decisions.

01

Keep results attached to initiatives

A portfolio story is credible when each measure retains its comparison, scope, and ownership boundary.

02

Treat operations as product work

Operator time, testing speed, support demand, and reporting can change the value of customer-facing ideas.

03

What I would do differently

I would define portfolio-level evidence rules earlier so teams could compare customer, operator, and platform bets without flattening unlike outcomes.

Leadership Conversations

Building product ecosystems, stronger teams, and sharper executive alignment.

Open to Product Design Director opportunities across growth, platform, loyalty, and product ecosystem leadership.

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Based in the U.S. and open to product design leadership opportunities.