Feature
SHOCKWAVE is a Live Ops system rewarding higher bets with better odds; brought to life by an electric eel that literally sparks joy.
Project
Gold Fish Casino Slots
Role
UI/UX Designer - responsible for the design of features within the team including concepting user flows, designing branding, and final asset hand-off. I shared responsibilities and collaborated with another designer, Zig Sanders, whom I handed off the project to when I was shifted to another feature, as well as the Leadership, Product, Engineering, and QA teams.
Timeline
8 weeks
Tools
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Photoshop
Figma
Blender
Problem
Increasing revenue during live ops events requires increasing average bet and spins without negatively impacting long-term retention. The game does not have events that give players a choice to participate without punishing them if they do not, creating hesitation, reducing player confidence, and ultimately, less spend. Forced participation created hesitation, reducing willingness to bet higher or remain engaged for multiple spins.
The challenge was to design an opt-in event that made the value of higher bets immediately clear, felt controllable, and sustained engagement throughout the event window.
Solution
Design clear, opt-in event that visibly improves reward odds as players bet up for higher coin-in without a drop in engagement. By progressively removing lower-tier rewards, the value of higher bets becomes immediately legible, reframing betting up as a transparent upgrade rather than a hidden risk. An affable character shifts the act of betting up from uncertainty into confidence by surfacing improved odds in real time. Betting up is transformed into a playful, mini-game experience.
ShockWave transforms betting up from being perceived as a risk into a clear, playful upgrade that the player can control, encouraging higher bets and spin activity, and in turn, long-term player engagement.
01
USER FLOWS
Initial Flows
To kick off the ShockWave design process, I mapped a user flow outlining how players enter, qualify for, and progress through the event across bet states based on the feature spec. I reviewed the flow with the product owner and engineering team to ensure alignment with technical requirements before moving into wireframing. This process ensured all key moments were captured early and surfaced opportunities to introduce narrative beats within the mini-game experience. I designed the flow with three goals in mind:
Encourage players to bet higher
Clearly demonstrate the cause and effect of bet behavior on rewards
Ensuring consistency with the existing Pearl Bank mechanic including resizeability
Key Components
Character + Logo
Progress Bar + Bet UI
Character design that is native to Gold Fish mascot lineup
Dynamic character animations to indicate states
Supplemental non-character iconography
Landscape and portrait mode support to be compatible with existing Pearl Bank
Branding
Progress bar with clear visuals and messaging to indicate states to players
Timer and action copy in a legible, at-a-glance layout
Landscape and portrait mode support to compatible with existing Pearl Bank
Branding
Final Flows
02
BRANDING & Concepts
Early creative discussions focused on how to integrate the feature in a way that aligned with Gold Fish’s playful underwater world while also ensuring consistency with the existing Pearl Bank design. The team aligned on introducing a new character to the ecosystem to provide a light, narrative layer to guide the player toward the desired behavior while retaining the dynamic scaling/resizability of the original Pearl Bank.
Naming exploration centered on evoking urgency and limited-time participation, with the team narrowing it down to Wave Hour and ShockWave, with ShockWave ultimately selected for its energy, immediacy, and brand fit.
Existing default Pearl Bank
Default Pearl Bank in landscape lobby with Pearly Rush live ops event toaster
EARLY CONCEPTS
Concepts spanned from pelicans mischievously scooping up pearls and seals playfully headbutting them, while hermit crabs pilfered them into their capacious shells, to more abstract wave-based graphical meter representations.
The team ultimately aligned on a direction that prioritized dynamism, resulting in an electric eel concept designed to animate instantly in response to player input on the + and – bet controls.
This would allow the feature to feel reactive and expressive, while the eel’s serpentine body would accommodate dynamic pearl counts and seamless transitions across different orientations.
03
Feedback & Iterations
Key ISSUES
Feedback from design reviews identified key issues and several opportunities to clarify the feature’s mechanic and improve gameplay.
Progress State Ambiguity
• Segmented meter states felt decorative rather than meaningfully incremental since these could be altered by config data set by the product team
• Testers expected stronger visual escalation as they triggering Shockwave
Key CHANGES
Zig’s updated character expression sheet
Visual Hierarchy Unclear
• The feature title, timer, and CTA competed for hierarchy, with the countdown timer most frequently being overlooked
• In layouts where the eel wrapped around the bar, players had difficulty identifying the true progress track
Character Design
• Character and expression sheet need another pass
This task was handed over to teammate, Zig Sanders, who created the final character design, while the rest of the feature continued to be developed
Changes came from cycles of iterations that were shown to the team until all key issues were resolved.
Updated Character Design ✅
Zig introduced a cleaner, more modern redesign of the eel that:
• Simplified emotional range and facial expressions across key states (sleeping, waking up, charging, activated) to create anticipation as players bet up
• Received positive feedback from team-wide playtest for feeling more communicative and aligned with Shockwave’s branding and goals
Visual Hierarchy Clear ✅
• Prioritized the progress bar functionality by integrating timer into the progress bar to enforce urgency
• Enlarged timer type size and increased contrast with backer for clarity. Made CTA copy the by line of the feature logo
• Reduced character overlap across the fill region and selected a clean 9-slice-compatible design to to resize across portrait and landscape
Progress State Reads Well ✅
• Simplified the segmented meter into a clean, continuous progress track to better support configurable thresholds
• Increased contrast between filled and unfilled segments to improve clarity
• Worked with tech artist and art director to add lightning FX and subtle character anticipation animations as players near completion for greater emotional payoff
