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Project 4 of 8

Supporting the Digitization of the Betting Shop Display (BSD)

Racing Post is a daily print and online newspaper, publishing data, opinions and analysis on horse racing and other sports. This research surrounded the Betting Shop Display (BSD); a print newspaper displayed in bookmakers showing racing fixtures and form details for the horses. The BSD has been a core part of the retail betting environment for over 20 years and predominantly remains a horse racing and greyhound product.

Completed at Racing Post, London (3 month contract).

Myself
User Researcher

Problem

When the BSD was first launched in 1996, horse racing and greyhounds accounted for 90% of betting shop turnover. However, the landscape of betting shops has changed dramatically.

With the introduction of Self Service Bettings Terminals (SSBTs), Fixed Odds Betting Terminals (FOBTs) and online betting which all cater for other sports, there are concerns about the relevance of the BSD in the modern-day betting shop. I was brought in to support the design of a digital BSD product.

Outcome

For three months I immersed myself in the betting shop environment. I carried out generative research to understand who used the BSD, which parts of the paper were most useful and why, and how the form data was used by different types of bettors to inform their betting workflows. This research informed a fundamental redesign of the existing BSD newspaper and the information architecture of its digital equivalent.

Objectives

1

Understanding how to transition the print BSD into digital.

2

Staying relevant in the new betting shop environment without alienating an existing customer base.

3

Enticing sport betters into horse racing.

Personas

Bets using the BSD
Bets using lucky numbers
Bets on the best odds

Bets using the BSD

Walter has been betting on horse racing for twenty years. Now retired, he visits the betting shop every morning and stays for several hours. He used to have a season ticket to the races at Newbury and enjoys talking to the other punters about upcoming horses and jockeys.

Responsiblities

  • In the morning, Walter picks up his local newspaper to see which races are going on that day.

  • In the shop, he reviews every race and meeting looking for a horse with potential or a jockey he knows. Races are chosen based on the horse.

  • Walter uses the Racing Post meeting cards to compare the form of 1 or 2 horses in more detail.

  • The most important information is the jockey, the trainer and the quality of the ground.

Challenges

  • Walter doesn’t often read the detailed form on the BSD because the print is very small.
  • The detailed form only tells him the performance of a horse’s last three races, and he would prefer to see more.
  • He’s learned from experience not to take tips from people in the shop or from the papers – “you only have yourself to blame if it loses.”

Bets using lucky numbers

Like Walter, Steve visits the betting shop as part of his daily routine and enjoys the social aspect. He bets on a variety of sports including football and the greyhounds. Steve used to do more detailed form study when betting on horses but decided it’s not worth the effort. Now he only bets using his lucky numbers or when a horse’s name has meaning to him.

Responsiblities

  • In the morning Steve picks up the local newspaper to see which races are going on that day.
  • He reads through the racing index – a list of all horses racing that day in alphabetical order. Steve enjoys finding horses with similar names, for example, those which have the word ‘king’ in them. He also has lucky gates and numbers.
  • Steve writes out his bets for all the horses with a similar name. Usually, he enters them into a lucky 15 bet.

Challenges

  • The Racing Post doesn’t provide a racing index to list horses in alphabetical order, so he buys an alternative paper.
  • The alternative papers only cover national races and he’d like to see a racing index on the international ones.
  • He’s learned from experience not to take tips from people in the shop or from the papers – “you only have yourself to blame if it loses.”

Bets on the best odds

Jason works on a construction site and visits his local betting shop at lunchtime or before and after work. He tends to use his phone in the shop to help him decide what to bet on but tries not to place too many bets online because he could lose a lot of money.

Responsiblities

  • Usually, Jason only has 20 minutes to spend in a betting shop while on his break and likes to place as many bets as possible in that time.
  • He uses the TVs in the shop or the apps on his phone to study ‘market movers’ – horses where the prices are changing.
  • Odds are the most important factor. He’ll put a higher stake on low odds, and a low stake on high odds with hope his winnings will balance out.

Challenges

  • Jason doesn’t have time to follow the horse racing in detail and doesn’t know what a lot of the information on the BSD means.
  • He’s lost a lot of money betting online before so comes to the shop to slow himself down.
  • He agrees with the sentiment, “the bookie always wins” but he’s happy with the system he uses.

Contextual inquiries with betting shop staff

By capturing how the BSD was displayed in shops, including what customers asked for, I could start to make inferences about betting behaviour. It also gave me an initial indication of BSD usability issues.

At the start of this project, the b2b team knew the BSD was four times larger than the space available in the average betting shop. They relied on staff changing the pages throughout the day .

  • I found that many staff were disengaged with horse racing and lacked guidance on how to hang the BSD.
  • Staff were conflicted over which side of the paper to hang; evening races were prioritised over the internationals taking place in the morning.
  • Papers were rarely changed through the day despite space being an issue.

Survey

To get a sense of how typical it was for staff to use the BSD in this way I captured self-reported activity from a larger audience.

It confirmed that this pattern of behaviour wasn’t just a reflection on staff disengagement, but on what punters were specifically asking staff to display.

“Just this morning someone came in and placed £200 on a 6pm race and £200 on a 7pm race. About 50% of punters will prepare their bet for the evening in the morning.”

Contextual inquiries with customers

Speaking with staff had revealed that some horse races were more preferred by customers than others. I wanted to dig into why.

I ran contextual inquiries to observe how bets were placed in a shop, and included questions about what customers did before, during and after their visit. This helped build a picture of our betting shop customers and explained their betting style.

I originally segmented customer groups based on time (rich vs poor) and technology use (literate vs illiterate).

Thematic analysis

Thematic analysis helped me establish key patterns between a person’s betting style and the information they seek when placing a bet, and helped inform the betting shop customer personas seen above.

Thematic analysis proved to be an essential process because it helped persuade stakeholders that a great number of punters don’t use form information when placing a bet.

Communicating the current state

Thematic analysis allowed me to create user journeys for each persona based on robust data.

Needs statements

This research generated 44 need statements, supporting three personas and the additional needs identified for punters to bet on international horse racing.

“Walter, a dedicated form better, needs to compare a horse against who it has previously beaten in order to have confidence in the bet.”

First click testing

At the same time, I ran first click usability tests with the persona groups to test how well punters knew the BSD race cards.

I wanted to validate whether form betters understood the BSD race card as well as we thought. Likert scales also helped me determine the relative importance of each figure for betting.

This process helped us identify which BSD figures were important but needed re-labelling, and which figures could be removed in order to simplify the race cards.

Wireframing core concepts

I put together some low-fi wireframes as one method of communicating a vision for the BSD. The most important aspect was three different flows designed for the form better, lucky punter and odds better: https://pr.to/4JPN63/


Impact and Results

This project was the first time

It led to

Upon reflection

  • my biggest inhibitor was the recruitment of the non-tech savvy sample. Contextual inquiries worked well but a research team would be required for quantitative data collection.
  • Having worked with a team who was new to user-centered design, it was exciting to lead the development of a vision for this product.