Paul Sztajer's Blog - How many players should you playtest with? Reposted from www.throwthelookingglass.comSo, you've started developing your game, and you've got your basic gameplay done. It's time to start playtesting*. The question occurs to you: how many people should be playtesting my game? *If you've got something you can playtest with, you should be playtesting. As soon as possible. Jakob Nielsen, usability king, says that you only need 5 users to test each iteration of a design, and in many ways, this philosophy applies directly to playtesting. Nielsen's basic argument is that testing is about improving a design rather than finding every single problem. There's a caviet to this: if you're just sending your game to 5 friends and asking them to 'tell you what they think', 3-5 probably isn't enough. There are ways of getting almost as much information from your testers in an online playtest. There are two exceptions to this rule of 3-5. So that's it.
UX London 2015 Being a UX person on an Agile project can really suck, and for lots of reasons. But, one of them springs from UX people working hard to think holistically about their product, while Agile developers are working hard to break things down into tiny buildable parts. User Story Mapping is simple UX-centric approach for understanding your product or feature idea from a whole UX perspective while still breaking down the product into small backlog items. In this workshop you’ll learn how to build maps to understand how users work today and to identify opportunities for improvement. You’ll learn how to build maps to describe feature ideas and explore strategies for incremental release, and iterative and incremental development. Workshop Outline: Mapping essentials Elements of a story mapThe lifecycle of a story mapSimple models and shared understanding Story mapping planning strategies Finding minimal viable releasesIdentifying product experimentsCreating a risk-reducing development strategy
Features - Practical Game Playtesting: A Wii-Based Case Study [Sidhe's Griffiths discusses in depth how the GripShift developer playtested, and then took that feedback to improve, their Wii version of the recent Speed Racer game, from Wiimote tweaks to difficulty changes.] Playtesting a game for the very first time is an incredibly daunting task. I'm not talking about all the preparation that goes into it; I'm talking about the abundance of negativity that is bound to be thrown your way. The first time players get their hands on the game always results in problems -- and when it comes time to write up the report, I realize with each soul-destroying point that it's my job to then present this information to the developers. However, the light at the end of the tunnel is that we can find and tackle these problems while the game is still in our hands. There is always the tendency, though (and I myself am guilty of this) to believe that your game is going to be perfect. Yet, we did get it out on time, and it actually received pretty good reviews.
What if testing was a part of the design process One of the great benefits of digital design is that it can be tested and measured. Yet so many aren’t doing that. Partly we can blame the workflow, where the client buys the design from the designer and focuses on aesthetics, not the results. But what if that could be included into our deliverables? To test or not to test Although testing is a powerful tool used by pros, there is no reason why you shouldn’t test simpler sites even if it's a portfolio or a marketing landing page. There are three main types of testing: Testing the IF. Misconceptions of testing Testing can give a lot of insights and data if done right, but also there are plenty of ways to screw it up. Additionally, instead of approaching your average users, it's more interesting to talk to “extreme” users who really love or hate your product. A/B testing A/B testing or split testing is something you hear most often. Heatmaps and clickmaps can show you where the users are clicking. User testing Surveys Summary
Lennart Nacke's Blog - Biometrics, Game Evaluation and UX: Approach with caution The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company. My colleague Steve Fairclough recently posted an article on PhysiologicalComputing.net in which he discusses the potential pitfalls of biometric research and how it is currently being sold to the game industry. Steve outlines that "psychophysiological methods are combined with computer games in two types of context: applied psychology research and game evaluation in a commercial context. Similar to Mike Ambinder's presentation of user research and game design at Valve (PDF), he makes the point that games in this context are analysed using principles of experimental psychology. They are used as tasks or virtual worlds within which a research can study the behavior of players (you might recall John Hopson's Gamasutra article on behavioral game design).
We Love Users - Apprendre à construire de personas Qu’est-ce qu’un persona ? Définition Un persona est un archétype représentant un groupe de personnes dont les comportements, motivations et buts sont proches. Exemple Origines La méthode des personas a été créée par Alan Cooper. À quoi servent les personas ? Les personas sont des outils d’aide à la conception et de communication. Lorsque les comportements et les buts de plusieurs personas sont trop différents pour être servis par un même produit, il convient de fabriquer plusieurs produits distincts. Pour illustrer cette idée, nous pouvons nous appuyer sur l’exemple fourni par Cooper dans « About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design ». En résumé, les personas servent à : Synthétiser les idées qui émergent des observations, des entretiens avec des utilisateurs ; Communiquer et partager une vision commune des utilisateurs au sein de l’équipe ; Générer de l’affect et de l’empathie pour des utilisateurs parfois difficilement accessibles. Comment les construire ? Recherche Analyse Modélisation
Design, Games, & Game Design (feat. SpyParty) - Chris Hecker's Website I gave a talk at UC Berkeley called Design, Games, & Game Design (feat. SpyParty). It was for the UC Berkeley School of Information's Design Futures Lecture Series, and I was invited by the excellent Elizabeth Goodman. The talk was a mix of general design stuff, game design stuff, and SpyParty design stuff. Among other things... I talked about the basic design → build → test loop, and how I don't think you can separate out the design and build steps if you're making something deep and new and (especially) interactive. I answered questions for longer than the actual lecture! And, I talked more about the Blizzard-inspired Depth-first, Accessibility-later development model I'm following, including forcing people to read the four-page instruction manual before they can play. Here are the synced audio and slides, with 40 minutes of Q&A at the end: Here are the raw ppt and mp3. Also, Tom Curtis was there and wrote about the lecture at Gamasutra.
Insight · About Jeremy Fabre co-founder Loves coding, reading, boxing and parkour. He enjoys traveling with his girlfriend. Emanuel Petre co-founder Loves learning, technology and swimming.