Tools designed for high-stakes hospitality
Event staff were fighting their software more than using it. I built a new registration and seating experience that supported their workflow instead of disrupting it.
UX Research • UX Design • Figma • React-Based Development
Overview
At Golden Nugget Las Vegas, one of the city’s most iconic and historic casinos, hundreds of players compete in tournaments every month. But behind the scenes, the Special Events team relied on a registration tool that was riddled with errors, costing them hours of tedious manual balancing.
The Challenge
Because the existing tool had taken years of back-and-forth with corporate IT to provision, neither the Special Events team nor IT had the bandwidth to make changes. While I arrived at GNLV as a Digital Marketing Intern by title, I stepped into a product design role by practice, taking ownership of a central question: How might I reduce the risk of user error in the registration flow while introducing a seating system that fit seamlessly into the existing process?
Solution & Impact
I reimagined the flow by breaking down a single, convoluted dropdown menu into multiple guided screens—one of which introduced seating—so that the process became more structured, intuitive, and resistant to error.
I started by assessing GNLV's existing tournament registration tool to understand its current functionality and limitations.
The old system began with staff uploading a massive invitee list (sometimes 400,000 to 600,000 rows) into the tool. Each entry contained a player’s name, account number, entry type (paying or comped), and casino host name. On tournament day, only a portion of those invitees actually arrived, and staff also had to accommodate walk-ins. For each player who did show up, staff recorded their payment method (cash, chip, comp, or credit card).
This process repeated across every round. In rounds where mulligans were allowed, purchased mulligans were tracked separately on their own spreadsheet, creating another file to manage alongside the round data. After each round, staff exported a fresh spreadsheet that merged together the present invitees with the walk-ins, along with all payment information.
Then, I interviewed Ashley and went to a blackjack tournament for myself to see the system in action.
Through my interview with Ashley and firsthand experience assisting with player registration at a tournament, I identified the following issues:
★ Bloated dropdown
“It’s easy to misclick and put a player in the wrong round, especially when I'm talking to them, and fixing it later can take hours out of our weekend.”
Disparate systems
“Right now, guests draw random seating cards from a basket. There's a disconnect between the system we use to register them and the one we use to seat them."
Onboarding challenges
"I wish the processes were clearer so it'd be easier for volunteers to use."
Design Process
Wireframing
I designed the main "form" for player registration and sketched out how might would work.
Event name
Display current staff member handling registration and total registrants beneath the event name
Vertical round tabs
Select round of tournament
Round name
Round management buttons
Post-registration actions: Payment Breakdown and Export
Horizontal round management tabs
Mid-registration actions: Add Player, Player Lookup, and Seating Chart
Player search
Search bar to enter player's 14-digit account number
Player name and entry type
Entry type only visible for round 1
Critical form fields
Form fields to select player's time slot, payment type, and mulligan (split payment and mulligan accessible via checkbox), highlighted in yellow
Non-critical form fields
Form fields to enter host name and comment
Register player button
Early explorations of the tabling system established key features, such as the tabling overview screen and disabling tables.
High fidelity mockups
I met regularly with Ashley and consulted with Landry’s Director of Application Development, Todd Hang, to ensure the wireframes reflected real technical constraints.
Registration flow
With the system in place, I turned to designing the registration experience, focusing on efficiency and reducing the risk of human error.
Time slot selection and payment
The fields were ordered based on user interviews to reflect the sequence the Special Events team typically follow in their registration workflow. Moving mulligans to an optional checkbox in the registration process helped break down the bloated dropdown.
Seat assignment
Seat colors indicate status: red = selected, gray = empty, outlined = occupied, and dark gray = disabled. I identified the potential for the tool to generate seating cards, removing the need for pen and paper and further digitizing the process.
Assign Random Seat button
Ashley noted that some guests with vision problems prefer sitting near the ends of the table. To address this, I designed the Assign Random Seat button as a split-button component. When a seat number is selected, the randomizer assigns a table at random while keeping that seat number, honoring the guest’s preference and maintaining fairness. The system reflects this by marking the other seats with a ‘Disabled’ status.
Conflicts of interest
Ashley noted that some players prefer not to sit at the same table as friends or relatives. I designed the interaction so that clicking an occupied seat during registration disables that table, preventing it from being used in seat randomization. Clicking again re-enables it.
Player Lookup
Within Player Lookup, staff can update a specific player’s payment details using the same form as registration for consistency and efficiency. Seating adjustments are handled in a modal, keeping the workflow focused without pulling staff away from the lookup view.
Seating Chart
Seating Chart lets staff view and manage seating for each time slot of every round.
In Seating Chart, staff can lock a table globally, which removes any currently seated players and prevents future registrations. Locked tables are represented with a lock icon to clearly differentiate them from player-specific disabled tables.
Stakeholder Feedback
Applying staff insights
Although my two and a half months at GNLV weren’t enough to fully build out the reimagined tournament registration tool, I still wanted to see it in action. I assembled a functional prototype in React with the help of Claude Code to support lightweight user testing. I observed Ashley completing tasks like registering a player and changing seats in real time. These sessions validated key flows and informed refinements that brought the tool closer to staff workflows.
At the end of the summer, I demoed my work to leaders at GNLV and Landry’s corporate IT. Here’s what they had to say:
"Rapid prototyping offers the potential to understand whether it's worth developing these types of tools in-house or investing in third-party products. That's incredibly valuable." - Taylor Wescott, VP of IT (GNLV)
"The way the interaction design handles conflicts of interest to meet players’ needs is really thoughtful and feels true to their actual preferences." - Ashley Blaska, Executive Director of Marketing Operations (GNLV)
Reflections