UX Research • 2025
Post-Login Navigation Research
A two-part usability case study on BetAnything's post-login experience, from broad discovery testing to a focused, iterated validation study.
BetAnything had no previous post-login home experience, so every interaction had to be reconsidered. Our research revealed where the new model worked, where it broke down, and what needed to change before launch.
Role
Mid-Senior UX/UI Designer
Team
5 UX/UI Designers
Timeline
2 studies within 1.5 months
Methods
Moderated testing, think-aloud, affinity mapping, SUS
Outcome
SUS score of 84 (Grade A), Grid-first recommendation
Project overview
BetAnything's post-login experience is the hub where logged-in users find their balance, place bets, and move between verticals like Sports, Casino, Lottery, and Horses. Since none of this existed yet in the live product, we ran two rounds of usability testing to validate the new navigation model and catch friction before it shipped.
Context
Company: BetAnything, a global online gambling platform.
Moment: the company was mid-redesign, split across two teams. Rocket Air, in New York, worked on pre-login. Our Costa Rica team worked on post-login.
Starting point: the live product had no home page or lobby at all. Logging in dropped users straight into the Sports betting product.
Our job: design and validate an entirely new post-login navigation model, including the home page, lobby, and cross-vertical browsing, from scratch.
The studies
The first study cast a wide net across the entire post-login flow. It surfaced a specific, high-impact problem in how users browsed casino games. Rather than guess at a fix, we ran a second, focused study that tested three alternative browsing patterns head-to-head, then iterated the winning design with stakeholder feedback before finalizing it.
Why two studies?
Study 1 showed us where users were getting stuck when navigating post-login. Study 2 confirmed exactly how to fix it.
The two studies share more than one thread: both casino browsing and button-labeling confusion first surfaced in Study 1, then got resolved in Study 2.
My role
I worked on the research workstream across both usability studies alongside four other UX/UI designers throughout the testing and iteration process. We planned the research, moderated the sessions, organized findings through affinity mapping, and translated the evidence into prioritized design recommendations.
The challenge
The problem
BetAnything's post-login experience is where users find and place real-money bets, but early observation and stakeholder concern pointed to friction in how users navigated, specifically, how they browsed casino games.
Where users were struggling:
Too much scrolling
Users struggled to find a specific casino among many card options.
Lost track of progress
Users often lost track of where they were while navigating the site.
Unclear betting status
Users weren't sure whether their sport's bet had registered correctly.
Why it mattered
This isn't just a visual issue. In a real-money betting product, every extra tap between intent and a placed bet is a chance for a user to abandon the flow. That's why validating this specific flow, rather than the whole app at once, was worth two dedicated rounds of research.
Research scope & limitations
Due to budget limitations, both studies recruited 6 different internal participants from the Marketing department. Same company, but not regular or familiar users of the product itself, which gives a reasonably close approximation of a first-time user's perspective.
One exception: the Casino Director, who does have hands-on product familiarity, was involved in reviewing the final design proposal. Because of this setup, we treated the results as directional validation, not a replacement for future research with external real-money users.
Study 1: Discovery
The post-login page is designed to create a seamless, personalized experience. This study validated the design decisions behind it by observing how users navigated the interface. We focused on navigation and comprehension exclusively, not individual game mechanics.
Participants
6 internal testers, Marketing dept.
Age range 21 to 51 years, recruited through convenience sampling.
Session format
Moderated, in-person, screen-share
30 to 40 minutes per session, combining think-aloud with follow-up questions.
What worked
Navigation behavior: the home page, side menu, and footer all held up.
Positive perceptions: like "filters are quite useful."
Satisfactory interactions: including easy vertical switching.
What didn't
Flow difficulties: around casino search and placing sports bets.
Interactive element confusion: like "See More" versus "Play Now".
Confusion and frustration: around a handful of unintuitive elements.
Where things broke: the seed for Study 2
The affinity mapping surfaced recurring issues around navigation, interactive elements, mental models, frustration, and information hierarchy. But the clearest problem was casino discovery.
4 of 6 users struggled to find a specific casino because of the number of cards inside the horizontal All Casinos carousel.
Our initial recommendation was simple: provide another way to browse larger collections instead of forcing users through a long horizontal scroll. This single finding became the basis for Study 2.
Raw Testing Log
Every session was logged task by task, capturing each participant's click path, observed behavior, direct quotes, and a task-completion score. Individual transcripts stay internal, but the patterns they surfaced feed directly into affinity diagram (next).
Affinity Diagram
We grouped observations into recurring themes through an affinity diagram to reveal patterns across the experience. These categories helped us connect individual behaviors, pain points, and perceptions into broader UX insights.
See all 12 research themes
- Navigation Behavior
- Flow Difficulties
- Buttons and Filters
- Visual or Functional Problems
- Expectations Misalignment
- Discomfort with New Systems
- Lost or Blocked Moments
- Unintuitive Elements
- Positive Perceptions
- Satisfactory Interactions
- Proposed Changes
- Suggested Interactions
Study 1: SUS & key recommendation
System Usability Scale, Grade A ("Spectacular")
A strong baseline for the new post-login navigation.
The new navigation scored 84 on the System Usability Scale, placing it in Grade A within the scoring framework used by the team.
That gave us confidence in the overall direction, but the qualitative testing still uncovered 9 actionable areas for improvement.
Highest-impact recommendation
"Add a View List option for horizontal scrolls with more than 3 cards, or just display the cards as a list."
4 of 6 users struggled to find a specific casino due to the number of cards in the horizontal scroll under All Casinos. This recommendation, more than any other, became the direct basis for Study 2.
Other notable findings
Three more issues came out of Study 1. Switch between them to see the evidence behind each.
"I wouldn't change its position. Just a few clicks to complete the task."
Study 2: Validation
During Study 1, most users struggled to find a casino due to the number of cards in the horizontal scroll under All Casinos. This study tested the impact of adding an alternative view to make browsing easier and more intuitive. We compared the original Carousel, Grid, and List layouts head-to-head. Switch between the three tested views to see their strengths and weaknesses.
Carousel view
Grid view
List view
Most Visually Appealing, but Least Efficient
Aesthetically pleasing, and good for new users exploring casually.
The "Play Now" naming made users think a game will launch immediately, rather than opening the casino lobby.
Few users clicked past the first couple slides, so content further along went unseen.
Too many slides overwhelmed users.
Most Balanced & Preferred Overall
Easy to navigate, even with less scrolling. Clear structure throughout.
Preferred by new users as a middle ground between List and Carousel.
The "Play Now" and "See more" vertical accommodation was the most intuitive layout.
No weaknesses were reported for this view.
Best for Regular Players & Efficiency
Fast selection, and it showed more casinos at a glance.
Users appreciated seeing game types up front.
The play icon felt unclear, closer to a video control than a call to action.
The "+" button's purpose was unclear, seems more like a deposit button.
Study 2: Improvements & final proposal
Our suggested improvements
Optimize Grid View as the primary selection experience, while keeping List View for fast access.
Rename "Play Now" to "View Games" to set clearer expectations and avoid implying that the game will launch immediately.
Replace the "See More" button with category tags, so differences between casinos are visible at a glance.
Sort filtered casinos by popularity using internal data to surface the most relevant options first and improve discoverability.
Add and reorganize filters around the new game categories to make content easier to find.
Before
After
Final proposal, after stakeholder review
The proposal then went through a final stakeholder review. The Grid structure remained, along with the simplified category system and reduced scrolling. Stakeholders preferred the stronger action language of Play Now, so that label returned in the final proposal.
Note: Due to a shift in business priorities, the final proposal was not validated through an additional round of user testing. See What's Next for further context.
Outcomes & reflection
We validated the overall post-login navigation with a SUS score of 84, while identifying specific areas that still needed work. More importantly, we turned the biggest discovery from Study 1 into a dedicated comparative study instead of guessing at a solution.
That second round established Grid as the primary direction for casino browsing, and gave the team evidence for reducing scroll fatigue, reorganizing filters, and improving the information shown on each casino.
SUS score, Grade A
A strong baseline for the new post-login navigation.
Usability studies run
A broad discovery study, followed by a focused comparative study.
Actionable findings from Study 1
Surfaced through affinity mapping across navigation and interaction.
Recommended browsing pattern
Validated against Carousel and List in a dedicated comparative study.
What I learned
A broad usability study is great at telling you where something is wrong. A focused comparative study is much better at telling you what to build next.
I also came away with a much stronger appreciation for small content decisions. Labels like "Play Now," "See More," and "View Games" repeatedly changed what users expected to happen next.
And finally, bringing stakeholder feedback in after user testing, not instead of it, kept the design both user-validated and business-aligned.
What's next
Validate the Grid-first casino layout and other refinements with external, real-money users, not just the internal panel used in both studies.
Measure post-launch casino-page bounce rate and bet-completion rate to confirm the fix holds in production.
Extend the same navigation validation to the remaining verticals: Sports, Lottery, and Horses.
What this led to
These findings became part of the foundation for BetAnything's next redesign phase
A direction I cover in a separate case study: BetAnything, migrating from an agency-led process to one owned internally by our team.
Relevant documentation
Recordings of users interacting with the prototype on both studies
Interactive prototype used during usability testing
Questions about this project
Budget limitations meant both studies recruited 6 internal participants from the Marketing department instead of real-money players. They weren't regular users of the product, which gave us a reasonably close approximation of a first-time user's perspective, and the Casino Director, who does have hands-on product familiarity, joined the final design review. I treat the results as directional validation, not a replacement for future research with external, real-money users.
Study 1 told us where users were getting stuck, but not which fix would actually work best. Rather than turn "carousel versus grid" into a design opinion, we ran a focused comparative study that tested Carousel, Grid, and List head-to-head, then let the evidence, not a guess, decide the direction.
That change came from the final stakeholder review, not from user testing, and it wasn't re-validated with users in this research round. I'm keeping that distinction visible on purpose: it shows what the research actually validated versus what the business refined afterward.
