SPIN OF THE DAY

Scalable Reward System for Player Retention

At PokerStars, I led the concept and design of “Spin of the Day,” a visually striking and highly efficient bonus wheel that became a cornerstone of the company’s retention strategy. I set the creative vision and design direction while coordinating closely with cross-functional teams, across Product, CRM, and Tech.

Throughout the project, I mentored junior designers—supporting their growth in game UX, UI systems, and technical implementation. The outcome was a polished, scalable product that delivered a unique blend of business innovation, cost efficiency, and minimal development overhead.

Year
2018-2025

Client
POKERSTARS

My Role - Principal Designer

As Principal Designer, I drove the concept development, UX strategy, and visual direction. I collaborated closely with product, marketing, and third-party partners to ensure alignment across teams. My key contributions included:

  • Designing a casino-style bonus wheel with a premium, engaging look and feel

  • Creating a scalable system, built for easy reskinning and integration without change developing tool.

  • Streamlining UX for fast, frictionless daily use

  • Ensuring design consistency across multiple game environments

The Challenge 1 - Design

Old Design and Mechanic
Players had to collect stars day by day, which added friction and delayed gratification. While the collectible mechanic had long-term goals, many users didn't feel immediate satisfaction after spinning.

New Direction
Evolve the system into a guaranteed win per spin model while keeping the excitement, familiar feeling, and clear UX flow. Plus, optimize the mobile interaction using thumb-friendly zone design principles.

Simplify Interaction and Minimise Thumb Movement.

We explored two initial design concepts to achieve the project goals:

  • The first concept suffered from poor thumb accessibility.
    The primary CTA ("Spin" button) was positioned too high on the screen, making it difficult for users to comfortably reach it with one hand.
    This placement led to awkward interactions, increased the chance of mis-taps, and created a tiring user experience over time.

  • The second concept improved the CTA positioning by placing it within the natural thumb zone, making interaction easier and more ergonomic.
    However, the top section of the screen was left underutilized, creating an unbalanced layout.
    Additionally, players couldn't immediately view all available prizes at a glance, reducing the initial excitement and motivation to spin.

UX Solution: Thumb Accessibility Driven Layout for Mobile

Learning from the early concepts, we applied thumb reachability zone research to guide the final mobile UX and Visual design:

  • The wheel was moved to the centre of the screen and slightly reduced in size to allow players to easily view all available prizes at a glance. This improved transparency and boost the perception of fair play.

  • We introduced two Spin buttons to support different player preferences, A transparent ghost button placed at the center of the wheel for players who prefer spinning by interacting directly with the wheel.

  • A separate Spin button placed at the bottom of the screen, positioned for easy thumb access. The ghost button design keeps the UI clean and avoids confusing users who prefer using the bottom button.

Results

  • +40% increase in daily spins played per user.

  • +23% lift in player retention after 7 days.

  • Positive user feedback citing easier, faster, and more "fun" daily play.

The Challenge Part 2 - Technical bottleneck

PokerStars Casino needed a scalable, low-cost daily engagement mechanic to boost player retention without inflating rewards. Existing solutions were either too generic, hard to scale, or too resource-intensive to support long-term use across multiple products.

The original version of this feature was developed in Cocos Studio, with limited flexibility and scalability. My role was to assess its early-stage constraints and reimagine the system into a scalable, modular rewards tool that could adapt to both in-house and third-party games. This required balancing technical limitations with business goals, ensuring the system was cost-efficient, easy to integrate, and future-proof for evolving engagement strategies.

The Challenge Part 3 - 3rd Party Brand

Design Decision: Clarity & Production Efficiency

This concept was created to help us decide which design direction to pursue—from both a user experience and technical implementation perspective.

We ultimately chose the version on the 3rd. It allowed us to reuse the original game’s component sizes, eliminating the need for new asset dimensions and saving development time by avoiding extra coding work.

From the user’s point of view, we also replaced the Book of Dead symbols with familiar reward icons already used in our system. These icons clearly communicate bonus and prize values. Keeping them consistent avoided confusion—using slot game symbols from Book of Dead could have misled players by mixing slot icon values with the bonus reward system.

Key Features & Approach Scalable Visual Reskin Strategy

The original feature was built in Cocos Studio with limited flexibility and scalability.
To optimize the system, a modular reskin approach was introduced:

  • Existing layouts and components were reused without changing sizes or naming conventions.

  • New visuals were loaded onto the same structure, reducing production time from eight weeks to two weeks.

  • Existing code and spritesheets were reused to add new animation effects without extra development.

This solution delivered faster content updates, improved visual quality, and made the rewards tool scalable for both in-house and third-party games.

Outcome & Achievements

Cost Savings & Smart Fulfilment:
Reduced millions in reward delivery costs by connecting directly with partner games, eliminating the need for internal fulfilment systems.

High Adoption:
“Spin of the Day” rapidly became a flagship feature across multiple regions and driving engagement and daily return rates up to 95%.

Scalable Design:
Built for plug-and-play integration—easily slotted into new games and promotions with minimal development overhead.

Technical Innovation:
We reimagined the use of COCOS Studio, applying it in a non-traditional way to speed up UI development while maintaining visual quality. On top of that, we started integrating Phaser 3, a lightweight and flexible HTML5 game engine, into our toolchain—paving the way for faster prototyping and cross-platform compatibility.

Visual Excellence:
The bonus wheel UI brought a premium, Vegas-style aesthetic to PokerStars, setting a new visual bar internally and earning strong stakeholder praise.

Team Growth & Mentorship:
I used this project to mentor junior designers and developers, helping them navigate engine limitations, scalability strategies, and real-world production constraints. This was a key growth moment—many of them transitioned into more confident, autonomous team players who could ship with clarity and impact.

True Engagement Performance Across Major Markets

True Engagement trends across key international markets during the 2024–2025 period. Our product consistently maintained high engagement, with top-tier performance in:

  • Canada (Ontario): Maintaining above 90% engagement almost every week, showing outstanding product stickiness.

  • Europe (.eu/.com region): Demonstrated robust stability and engagement, rarely dipping below 88%.

  • United Kingdom: Remarkable upward growth trajectory — climbing from 60% to nearly 70% engagement, showing success in localised improvements.

  • Southern Europe (Italy, Spain, Portugal): Though more volatile, these regions recovered swiftly post-W31 dip, with engagement stabilizing above 80%.

Key Highlight

Despite a system-wide disruption in Week 31, we achieved full recovery in just one week, proving both our operational resilience and the strength of user loyalty.

  • 5/5 participants successfully interacted with Spin of theDay and received a Bonus Round in the process

  • 5/5 participants clearly understood the difference between the Bonus Round and the Spin of the Day

  • 5/5 participants clearly understood the difference between the Bonus Round and the Spin of the Day

  • It suggests that players perceive the Bonus Round as a valuable addition that enhances their overall gaming experience by providing additional rewards and value.

User Testing Results

“Definitely, I feel like there is more value in the bonus rounds than it is in the daily spin wheels.”

Direct Quotes

“Definitely. 100%. yes it turns the spin of the day into five spins of the day depending on how many bonuses run yet, any bonus spins you get.”

“That's definitely thrilling for everyone who plays these kinds of games to see that you have an extra try, or two, or three to see what you can win.”

Reflection

“Spin of the Day” evolved from a simple reward into a powerful driver of retention, brand expression, and partner engagement. It’s a prime example of how smart design delivers joy while driving real business impact.

Recommendation

One of the most talented designers I have worked with. Zhuo has an exceptional eye and is highly skilled across many aspects of illustration, design, animation, video editing, website coding along with string foundations of core UI/ UX.
Outside of this, Zhuo is extremely dedicated to his work, team collaboration and delivering overall company goals.
Would highly recommend.

— Conor Leavey —

(Managing Director of Casino at PokerStars Casino)

Zhuo is an absolute pleasure to work with. He has a unique ability to translate ideas into visually compelling and highly effective designs. Not only does he elevate concepts with thoughtful improvements and fresh ideas, but he also brings a level of patience, attention to detail, and professionalism that makes collaboration seamless. Zhuo’s easygoing nature and creative insight make him an ideal partner for any design project.

— Alexandra Byrne —

(Senior Product Manager at PokerStars Casino)