Designing for Constraint: Paulo Gonçalves on the Future of Product, AI, and Responsible UX
- Kevin Jones
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
As the global iGaming market matures, the distance between innovation and iteration has never been thinner. Operators and studios ship faster, collect more data, and speak endlessly of “AI transformation,” yet many of the products that reach players feel strangely interchangeable.
Paulo Gonçalves, Chief Product Officer at Logifuture, argues that the next wave of progress will come not from scale but from constraint — from learning to design inside the tightening bands of regulation, responsibility, and realism.
Gaming Eminence: The phrase “great product” gets thrown around a lot. From your perspective, what does it actually mean in 2025 — and how has that definition changed as player expectations and regulation have matured?
Paulo Gonçalves: "A great product isn’t one that surprises through novelty anymore; it’s one that feels inevitable once you use it. Players are overloaded with choice. They don’t want more content; they want coherence — something that aligns instantly with their intent.
In practice, that means anticipating behaviour rather than reacting to it. When we prototype, we ask: what is the player trying to achieve emotionally at this moment? That’s a very different question from what feature can we add next?
Regulation has actually helped sharpen that thinking. Constraints force you to articulate the purpose of a mechanic. If you can’t justify why it exists — ethically or experientially — it shouldn’t survive compliance review anyway.
And as libraries explode, discovery is the new frontier. Curation, personalisation, and social context will shape the next decade far more than raw production output."
Gaming Eminence: AI is the new catch-all answer to everything. Where do you see genuine differentiation emerging beyond automation?
PG: "Automation is the easy part — scheduling, optimisation, surface-level analytics. What’s harder, and more valuable, is simulation.
We’ve been using AI-driven bettor personas to model how different types of users behave in different jurisdictions. That lets us pressure-test ideas before a single line of code goes live. For example, a market like Kenya has completely different bet-flow dynamics to Spain or Portugal; you can’t just port UX patterns between them.
AI also helps generate creative variations and personalised prompts, but always under human oversight. The technology is confident when it’s wrong — that’s its biggest flaw. So we’re now developing a second-layer agent to sanity-check outputs. Think of it as quality assurance for machine logic.
The larger philosophical question is creativity. Tools now exist that can spin up a slot or a virtual sport in minutes, but most of those outputs are flat, derivative, and soulless. If the industry treats AI as a content factory, it will drown in its own mediocrity. Used properly, AI should expand human imagination, not replace it."
Gaming Eminence: You operate across highly fragmented jurisdictions. How do you keep a roadmap scalable without diluting creative ambition?
PG: "The mistake is designing globally from day one. That approach creates sterile products because you spend all your energy avoiding non-compliance instead of pursuing ideas worth scaling.
We take the opposite path: design the ideal version first — the one that expresses the creative intent fully — then retrofit to local frameworks. It’s slower upfront but faster downstream because you’re adapting something strong rather than inflating something weak.
Africa is a good illustration. Betting behaviours there are distinct — micro-stakes, mobile-first, socially contextualised — and regulations are evolving fast. When we design for those realities first, we often discover mechanics that later inform features elsewhere. Constraint becomes a form of R&D.
Gaming Eminence: Every supplier now claims to be a “360° ecosystem.” How do you decide when to deepen a vertical versus broaden the platform?
PG: "With ruthless prioritisation. We treat the roadmap as a living experiment, not a declaration.
At a strategic level, we align using MoSCoW — must-have, should-have, could-have, won’t-have — to create shared language across teams. Then we score each item with RICE: reach, impact, confidence, effort. It sounds mechanical, but it protects you from chasing noise.
Data drives the decision. If engagement data shows a vertical has genuine traction, we deepen investment. If client or market signals expose a missing capability, we consider expansion. The worst sin is confusing curiosity with strategy.
Product maturity comes when you can say no faster than you can say yes."
Gaming Eminence: Responsible gaming is increasingly baked into regulation, but rarely into design. What does “responsible by architecture” look like to you?
PG: "It starts with the assumption that prevention is a design challenge, not a policy function.
We use predictive models to identify early-risk patterns long before a player self-excludes or support intervenes. Those insights feed directly into the UX layer: adaptive limits, subtle friction points, and contextual reminders that encourage healthier pacing without breaking immersion.
The framing is important — these aren’t obstacles; they’re guardrails built into the experience. Over time, I think the industry will stop seeing responsible gaming as a bolt-on and start viewing it as good product hygiene. A game that loses trust is a game that loses lifetime value."
Gaming Eminence: Fast-forward five years. What structural or behavioural shifts will most reshape how players experience gaming?
PG: "Two forces: compression and context.
Compression because everything is getting faster — micro-markets, instant settlements, real-time interactions. Betting is becoming social theatre: people want to participate collectively, on mobile, in the moment.
Context because AI will personalise everything — not just what markets appear, but how the interface reacts to individual behaviour. That’s powerful but risky. The temptation will be to overfit experiences to short-term impulses, which could erode sustainability if not balanced with responsibility.
So the future is both exhilarating and fragile. The challenge isn’t inventing new mechanics; it’s maintaining integrity when the tools to exploit attention become infinitely sharper."
Gaming Eminence: Final thought — what single principle guides your product philosophy?
PG: "Constraint is the new creative material. Whether it’s regulation, AI oversight, or ethical design, the limits are what make innovation meaningful. Anyone can build faster; not everyone can build better under pressure."