Redesigning the bonus engine
to improve operational confidence
Transforming a complex internal promotion system into a structured configuration experience that improves clarity, reduces operational risk and enables teams to launch campaigns with confidence.
INTERNAL WEB APPLICATION • SENIOR PRODUCT DESIGNER (UX/UI) • 2025
Introduction
The Rank Group is an FTSE-listed international gambling and entertainment company operating physical venues and digital platforms across the UK and Europe.
With over 7,700 employees and 3.1 million active customers, its internal systems support a business generating nearly £800M in annual net gaming revenue.
Context
In iGaming, promotions are a key driver of player acquisition, retention and engagement. These promotions were setup behind the scenes using an internal platform tool known as the bonus engine.
What is a bonus engine?
A bonus engine is the system in the background that decides who sees a promotion, who is allowed to claim it, what rules apply and when the reward should be given.
Who are the users?
What the player sees is a simple promotion but behind the scenes there is a tool that controls everything. This tool is called the bonus engine. A control panel where internal teams set up the offers, rules, and rewards before the player ever sees them.
Product Managers To define promotion strategy, mechanics and success metrics
CRM / Marketing Teams To create and target campaigns, segment players and schedule promotions
Operations Teams To configure, launch, and monitor promotions day-to-day
Customer Support To investigate issues, explain promotions to players, and resolve queries
Problem
Creating promotions in the bonus engine was complex.
Teams had to navigate multiple rules, conditions and screens, making it difficult to predict how a promotion would behave once live. Due to these issues, the teams relied heavily on manual checks, with many issues only discovered after launch.
Problem statement
" How might we help users set up complex promotions
correctly the first time with real-time validation? "
Discovery
The Bonus Engine was used by multiple internal teams to configure and manage promotional campaigns across the platform. While the initial signals highlighted the scale of the problem, they did not explain the root causes. To understand where things were going wrong, discovery focused on how teams set up promotions, how systems interpret those rules and how promotions are managed from start to finish.
Workshops summary
Working across a globally distributed organisation, I led a structured discovery phase combining user interviews, workflow analysis and cross-functional workshops with teams in London, Gibraltar, Mauritius and Cape Town.
System alignment workshop: Mapping how promotions actually work across teams
Understanding the full promotion lifecycle
Mapping how the system works behind the scenes
Simplifying how promotions are configured
Key themes
Discovery showed the issue wasn’t just usability, but a lack of clarity in how promotion logic was structured and interpreted across teams. The focus shifted to restructuring how promotions are defined, validated, and managed in practice. Three key guiding principles emerged.
Restructuring the Promotion System
System clarity
Built-in validation
Solution
Discovery showed that the promotion setup was difficult to understand, with hidden rules, dependencies, scattered configuration and a heavy reliance on manual QA. The redesign focused on making system behaviour visible while guiding teams through a structured step-by-step workflow.
Dashboard
Promotion management begins in the dashboard, where teams can view active and scheduled promotions. A card-based layout surfaces key details such as reward type, status, and activation windows, improving visibility across the promotion lifecycle and making promotions easier to scan and manage.
Campaign cards dashboard
Card view vs List view
The interface was designed for quick scanning, rather than detailed inspection. During exploration, both card and list layouts were considered. Cards provided a clearer visual hierarchy, while a list view offered a more compact format for managing larger volumes of promotions. The card layout was selected as the primary view, with a list view planned for future iterations.
System clarity
Step-by-step promotion workflow
Promotion setup was redesigned as a step-by-step workflow. Instead of one dense form, the new experience guides teams through each stage of setup, including eligibility, deposit requirements, rewards, and wagering rules. This structure reduces cognitive load by allowing teams to focus on one decision at a time.
Dynamic reward setup
The rewards section adapts dynamically based on inputs defined earlier in the setup process. Selections such as reward type, eligibility rules, and deposit conditions automatically adjust the available reward options. Inline rule logic Earlier configuration decisions automatically shape the reward setup, reducing invalid configurations and making rule dependencies visible.
Built-in validation
Preventative safeguards & configuration errors
The interface disables incompatible options and hides fields that are not relevant to the selected promotion type. This prevents rule conflicts before they occur.
Disabled inputs / hidden fields
Advisory feedback
Where configurations may introduce risk. The system provides warning messages highlighting potential issues without blocking progress. This allows teams to understand rule conflicts while maintaining flexibility.
Warning examples
Confident validation
Before activating a campaign the users review the full promotion configuration in a structured confirmation layer. This final step allows users to verify that the promotion behaves as expected before launch. The validation screen displays key promotion details including eligibility rules, reward structure, deposit conditions, wagering requirements, and campaign timing.
Review screen
Grosvenor casino
Increasing first-time deposit conversion through clearer user understanding
Designing clarity at the moment users commit led to measurable improvements in conversion, trust and operational efficiency.
increased by 13%
First-time deposit completion
reduced by 24%
Bonus-related support cases
