While working at the agency DSG (Digital Solutions Group) as a part-time Creative Director and UX lead for roughly 6 months, we came across the opportunity to pitch for a lucrative contract for South Africa's only national lottery. The task was to deliver a mockup of a complete overhaul of the digital user experience. This included both the website and mobile app, encompassing user journeys from: purchasing and redeeming tickets to live jackpot counts, TV show streams, live games, news, support, advertising... and a lot more. Almost 90% of lottery ticket purchases at the time were coming from physical ticket sales at retailers, hence there was a push to convert users to digital.

We were very late to the party, which required a full mockup of all user journeys within 5 days. Needless to say our small team was overwhelmed with the task and our division's manager made the sensible choice to reserve resources from what seemed like a long-shot. Feeling that this was a missed opportunity, I made an executive call to single handedly prepare the pitch anyway in any available time I could find outside of the existing pipeline. My thoughts were "This is a BIG deal, the largest jackpot awarded was over R100 Million..." it just seemed like an opportunity not to be missed. I went ahead.
 
Deciding that a full-scale mockup was unrealistic, I would focus on the most important path; the purchase journey. Secondly I would package this journey into a new and more sensible UI that would preface the overall layout and flow of the rest of the experience. I convinced a project manager to get on-board (KPI's ;) to prepare the paperwork, and lurched into investigating the existing platform while designing a much better one. Within the 5 day deadline I had what I felt was a drastically smoother and smarter experience. I then created a bunch of additional mockups for look-and-feel, packaged everything into a neat PDF with gesture cues, and we sent off the tender application, un-known to our manager.

A couple of weeks later DSG won the tender for UI/UX design for at least the first 12 months of the overhaul process, netting the company a very handsome contract for the department. I worked on the project for a few months of the infancy of roll-out before being head-hunted by a tech start-up making me an offer that I simply could not refuse. The project was then picked up by new service suppliers to DSG.

In the time that I went in and out of contracting for DSG it was an awesome experience surrounded by really smart people. I learned a lot about presenting to extremely corporate clients, their management styles and which markers/measures they are looking for in a pitch. I'm very grateful for the time and opportunity i had to contribute at this agency.