Lottery Operations Portal
Read about our product launch here
Research and Discovery
My initial work focused on uncovering user and business needs. I ran need-finding workshops in FigJam with former lottery operators and external consultants to understand pain points in the existing system. Because lottery companies keep their products proprietary and consultants were bound by NDAs, I wasn’t able to conduct a competitive analysis, which made these sessions even more critical.
Our original goal was to integrate lottery ticket purchases directly into point-of-sale (both self-checkout and cashier-assisted), so players could add a draw game ticket to their transaction and have it print at the bottom of their receipt. This would eliminate the extra step of visiting a separate lottery terminal and paying with cash.
Through discovery, we realized that no existing lottery management companies were willing to innovate toward this model. That insight forced us to pivot: rather than integrate with legacy providers, we needed to build our own lottery management and operations system from the ground up, working directly with retailers. This shift required us to define the minimum viable features necessary to legally and efficiently run a lottery while still delivering a seamless user experience.
Key Findings
Current systems are clunky, inefficient, and resistant to innovation.
Lotteries require a broad set of operational tools (from game setup → reporting).
Retailers prefer integrated POS solutions, not separate terminals.
Digital infrastructure could unlock future innovations (e.g. branded video tickets).
We took our findings and grouped them into two categories - Real Time Operations and Enterprise Operations and set out to make two separate products. The Real Time platform showed live sales, game updates, draw information and would host the necessary reports. The Enterprise platform would focus more on the back-end operations like setting up and managing Authorities, Retailers, Brands, etc.
We took our findings and grouped them into two categories - Real Time Operations and Enterprise Operations and set out to make two separate products. The Real Time platform showed live sales, game updates, draw information and would host the necessary reports. The Enterprise platform would focus more on the back-end operations like setting up and managing Authorities, Retailers, Brands, etc.
Real Time Operations
Enterprise Operations
Styling
We quickly moved away from the idea of maintaining two separate portals and instead consolidated everything into a single, comprehensive Operations Portal. In the early design phase, I worked through rapid,
high-fidelity iterations to quickly explore ideas and establish direction. At that point, the company had no brand guidelines beyond a logo and no formal design system. The development team had chosen MudBlazer as their framework, which provided a developer-oriented component library but little that was usable for design. To bridge this gap, I created styling guidelines and a custom component library in Figma, rebuilding the necessary MudBlazer components from scratch to establish a scalable design system.
The primary color in the Operations Portal adapts to the authority being viewed, providing operators with a clear visual cue when switching between states.
We took our findings and grouped them into two categories - Real Time Operations and Enterprise Operations and set out to make two separate products. The Real Time platform showed live sales, game updates, draw information and would host the necessary reports. The Enterprise platform would focus more on the back-end operations like setting up and managing Authorities, Retailers, Brands, etc.
Final Product
The final product is a cloud-native Operations Portal that enables state lotteries to fully manage their systems — from configuring games and monitoring draws to processing prizes and tracking real-time sales. It is already live in major retailers, allowing customers to purchase lottery tickets seamlessly at checkout while giving operators a modern, scalable alternative to outdated legacy systems.This product is never fully complete and new features are always being fine- tuned or added. My goal with these designs was to create patterns that can easily be applied to new pages, creating a consistent, familiar experience for our users as the platform continues to grow. This platform is very dense, so I’ve chosen to just highlight a few key sections. Call out a feature, benefit, or value of your site, then link to a page where people can learn more about it.
Draws
The Draws page set the standard for the rest of the platform. This is the most commonly used page for the various lottery operators. In the lottery, a draw is the scheduled event in which the winning numbers for a lottery game are selected. Each game has it’s own draw schedule and every draw produces one official set of winning numbers. There is a series of steps that each draw has to go through and tasks operators must complete to ensure the draw can be completed successfully.
Below are some examples of the draw page pattern applied in other areas of the portal
Games
Brands
Retailers
Pools
Prize Office
A big part of our Operations Portal is the Prize Office. This part of the system manages and verifies winning tickets and prize payouts. It acts as the claim control center, ensuring that all claims are processed securely, fairly, and in compliance with all regulations. Some core functions of the Prize Office are ticket validation, prize claim processing, balance and liability, audit and compliance and winner management. Here is a small snippet of the Prize Office we created for our Operations Portal.
The Final Product
Lazlo’s Cloud-Native Lottery & Retail Media Platform
Lottery administrators can:
Add states, retailers, and new games
Monitor draws and generate sales reports
Track and pay prize winners via Prize Office
Configure fraud monitoring and compliance settings
Retail integration:
Buy tickets at self-checkout
Tickets print directly on receipt
Enables promos, user trend tracking, omnichannel sales
Design highlights:
Intuitive interfaces for admins, operators, and prize offices
Scalable design system for rapid feature development
Clear workflows despite regulatory complexity
