Archive for the ‘UX Book Reviews’ Category
Evaluating User Experience in Games – Book Review
Regina Bernhaupt presents an academic guide to the application of user experience principles to games, as part of a series by Springer Books on HCI, and claims to represent the ‘coming of age’ of video games as a medium. The book is essentially a collection of academic papers, largely from recent conferences, and draws upon the talents of a wide range of authors, including Brighton based Graham McAllister and Gareth White, Katherine Isbister (Editor of Game Usability) and Emily Brown of SCEE. Although largely academic, the book does provide an insight into the cutting edge of this exciting field.
Early chapters in the book try to define what the field of user experience is, and what it means in relation to games. There is a degree of confliction here, with each chapter giving a slightly different interpretation, but they often settle on themes such as immersion, fun, presence, involvement, engagement, flow and playability.
Also wind, fire and heart!
The book gets more exciting when it presents a range of methods for evaluating user experience in games, with a variety of models appropriate for various stages of game development, from prototyping to post-production. This encompasses many custom models for different situations, such as a model for inexperienced gamers, or one for fitness games. The book also presents studies of the usability of game controllers, and the development of heuristics, which is particularly interesting in the last chapter which aims to collate and amalgamate previously created gaming heuristic.
All this content is interesting; however, a liberal spreading of maths means it often comes across as extremely academic (particularly in comparison to Isbister’s book). This can largely be accounted to the background of the various authors, largely coming from academic institutions, compared to the real world perspective of Game Usability.
Where the book excels is the divergence from this academic interpretation, notably in the papers by Vertical Slice and Emily Brown. Vertical Slice cover the current state of user experience evaluation across three Brighton game companies, and give an insight into the methods used through case studies, from the expert evaluation found in the earliest stages of production, through to the user testing close to the end of a project.
Brown gives a comprehensive overview of the range of tools currently in use, and shows optimism for the future, since she recognises only a “lack of knowledge” as a hindrance to the extension of user testing into gaming, rather than opposition to the methods. This conclusion is reinforced by the case studies by McCallister and White, who show game developers are looking to extend their application of user experience testing in the future.
Which will be the same as today, but with more robots
Unlike Remote Research or Game Usability, this book is not a practical how-to guide. Instead it presents the state of user experience in games, and where the cutting edge of research is. Personally I have found it very useful for developing my own research. However the book would be unlikely to be a ‘one stop shop’ for a developer looking to start user experience research at their company.
It will be useful to see how the wide range of interesting ideas found within this book can be integrated into practical solutions for companies to use when producing games. This move from the theoretical to the practical will greatly assist the field of user experience in games, and will truly see the ‘coming of age’ of video game usability.
Remote Research – Book Review
Remote Research is a new book by Nate Bolt and Tony Tulathimutte, who have worked with the UX agency Bolt | Peters on a wide range of studies, with clients such as Wikipedia and Electronic Arts (I recommend watching the funny out-takes of Spore user testing).
Their new book sums up their experiences with performing remote research (Tony has previously discussed this subject on this blog, in the comments here), and gives clear instructions on how others can perform a wide range of usability and user experience studies with people who are physically distant, by using the internet.
Don't judge it by it's cover...
Why would you consider remote research?
Written by advocates of remote research, the book highlights many of the potential advantages that remote research gives compared to a more traditional lab based study. These advantages are fleshed out throughout the book through testimonies of experts who have experience in this field, who offer real world examples to emphasise these points.
Some key advantages are:
- Access to a geographically diverse user base. Unlike traditional research, where a moderator would have to be in the same physical location as the subjects, remote research allows a study to be run with anyone who has a high speed internet connection, widely expanding the potential study-group.
- Easy to let stakeholders get involved. Because the research session is being broadcast over the internet, it’s possible to allow stakeholders (i.e. executives and designers) to view the session, and give (moderated) input. This of course increases their engagement with the process, and will be the ‘evidence’ for any conclusions derived from the research.
- Natural browsing environment. The validity of the research can be improved, not only because you are allowing the user to perform the task in a familiar environment (their own home computer), but also some recruitment methods allow you to capture a user performing a task they have selected. For example, recruiting a user who came to the site to buy trousers, for a task based on buying trousers, would provide more accurate results than asking someone to pretend to buy trousers…
- Cheaper (debatably). Not having to pay for travel can keep costs down, however other costs, such as incentives, will still be required, as well as paying for the software.
The remote research book doesn’t advocate killing off lab tests though – instead, it recognises that there are cases when the lab is still appropriate, such as when privacy is a concern. The book also features Andy Budd’s defence of the lab, which argues that remote research fails to pick up aspects of non-verbal behaviour, as well as arguing that remote research doesn’t just remove a selection bias (geography), since it also adds another (internet speed and technical ability). It’s brave of the book to include the case against remote research, and helps project a more trustworthy and reliable image for the book itself.
How to do remote research
The ‘meat’ of the book are the sections dedicated to how-to guides on the different forms of remote research. The book contains step by step instructions on performing moderated or un-moderated research, and includes key topics such as recruitment (and live recruiting), card sorts, and lots of handy hints – such as using IM clients as a chat room for multiple observers to automatically share and timestamp notes.
The book doesn’t just cover basic topics – it goes on to develop novel approaches to user research, such as using ‘reverse screen sharing’ to protect confidential software or data, and using mobile web to gain a new understanding of time-dependant information, outside of the traditional moderated setting.
It also extends the remits of remote research – it doesn’t have to just be websites, but can include doodles or sketches, as well as developing ideas for automatic research with analytics.
Another sort of remote research?
Conclusion
Remote Research is one of the easiest to read UX books I’ve reviewed. Like many Rosenfeld publications, it is laid out well, without appearing dense with text, and has a friendly tone throughout. The book can be likened to Krug’s writing in its style, and presentation.
The book is also practical and realistic, and deals with real world issues, like ‘fakers’ (who can be outed by using open ended questions to discover motives), legal issues, and common challenges such as reluctant stakeholders.
Most importantly for the practical UX practitioner, the book is not dogmatic. This is especially evident in the last chapter which admits that usability shouldn’t be the exclusive goal of product design, and needs to be coupled with initiative, and innovation to develop great things.
Overall this book is a great introduction, and how-to guide to the growing field of remote research, and will be an important tool for anyone trying to keep up to date with the latest research methods.
Effective UI by the EffectiveUI team – Book Review
Effective UI is a new book by … EffectiveUI, which aims to give an introduction to the art of building a superior user experience. EffectiveUI (the company) are a user experience agency from the US, recently known for building the iPad app Ideate, a tool for wire framing and sketching which uses pre-set templates for designers and developers. This book is the result of their years of experience, and aims to share some of the lessons they’ve learnt about delivering superior products through user based research.
Effective UI (the book this time) is not a self-start guide, or a definitive how-to, unlike Krug’s new book. Although it does give an introduction to UX tools, such as paper prototyping and user interviews, it doesn’t go into the depth that other books may do. Instead, the book seems to be aimed at a single person within an established company, who needs a one-stop resource to bring them up to speed on what User Experience is, and what it can do for their company.
Hence the book features a little bit of everything. Not only does it introduce the key concepts of UX, but it also has chapters on prototyping methods, how to understand and define key users (including how-to exercises), how to bring together a good UX team, and how to sell UX at your company (although it has less emphasis on subterfuge and guerrilla tactics than John Rhodes’ Selling Usability)
Pictured: John Rhodes at work
It’s in these high level overviews of crucial UX subjects that the book excels. EffectiveUI (the company) have been using these methods with clients for years, and have built up excellent ways of explaining the key concepts to clients. Through use of extended metaphors, referring to the process as a war, or akin to building a bridge, the book shares some of the best practices they’ve developed in this period. Some notable insights the book offers include de-emphasising the importance of written functional specs (which are incomplete, ill-informed, and slow to produce and react to change), and insight into appropriate methodologies, favouring an agile (with no capital letter) approach but also stressing the importance of not getting hung up on a formal adherence to a methodology.
The years of experience that the authors have had also give the book a wide range of real-world examples to draw upon, such as the production of year book software, which are used to illustrate and emphasise points. It’s definitely a credit to the book that the examples are relevant, and realistic, and help explain the key concepts being demonstrated, and how user centred testing improved the final product.
There are however a few odd choices, which may detract from the book’s ability to succeed in the marketplace. Most prominent is the name EffectiveUI (the book, not the company). I can understand why, as promotion for their company, the authors have chosen to name their book after their company. However it doesn’t seem very appropriate for the subject matter. Having not encountered the US-based company before, I had no prior knowledge of their work. Hence, the title has no associations to me. And it says “Effective UI”. Wouldn’t the reader assume the book is about producing an effective User Interface? Which isn’t the same thing as User Experience. Having looked for references to UI, it doesn’t appear in the index of this book at all (since it is a completely different subject in itself). I can see how this can lose potential customers – people looking for a book on UX are likely to miss this one, and people who buy this book looking for insights on UI will be disappointed.
UI. Not UX.
It’s also important to understand what this book is. It won’t give you step by step instructions on how to investigate UX. What it will do is introduce a non-UX specialist to the key concepts of UX, and give the reader an understanding of the benefits of UX . So don’t buy the book assuming that it’s a one-stop guide on becoming a UX practitioner (Each of the topics it covers could probably fill a book by themselves with how-to instructions!)
However, if you are new to the subject, and want a high-level introduction to key UX concepts, this is the book for you. Or if you are a manager, have heard about the emerging field of UX, and wonder what it can do for your business, this book will tell you everything you need to know. It won’t tell you any trade secrets, but it might just convince you to hire them!
Rocket Surgery Made Easy by Steve Krug – Book Review
Steve Krug’s new book, Rocket Surgery Made Easy, aims to be the only book someone new to user experience will need to start performing usability testing on their company’s website. And, with a few qualifying remarks, it is.
Krug’s previous book, Don’t Make Me Think, aimed to introduce the idea of web usability to a general audience, and had a number of key characteristics. It was short, designed to be read during a plane journey, and it was accessible, so that anyone could read it and understand usability. It also had a chapter on performing usability testing, which was removed in the second edition. Rocket Surgery Made Easy is that chapter.
In the decade since the emergence of this first book, Krug has been honing his usability testing skills, and through running numerous workshops, has perfected how to teach usability testing. This book is the summary of that experience, and in a wonderfully brief and readable style, is the only book someone new to user experience will need to start performing usability testing. Looking at that statement in more detail will give a deeper insight into the book.
Pictured: Steve Krug, international man of mystery
“The only book”
Krug’s book is a complete introduction to testing your company’s website, and guides the reader through every step of the process, from recruitment, and pre-test setup (including the equipment required), through to running the session and the debrief. The book also offers all the test-scripts and task cards you’ll need. Throughout the process Krug offers his best practise techniques, useful maxims to remember, and pitfalls to avoid. Essentially, you could start performing usability tests with this book alone as a reference.
“someone new to user experience”
This book aims to be an introduction, and so requires no prior knowledge (although reading his other book wouldn’t be a bad start). It also assumes that you are not a usability professional, just an interested party at a company, and that there isn’t a large degree of company buy-in, and believes that many rounds of semi-amateur testing is superior to one round of professional testing, which is valid. Because it assumes you don’t have a large amount of support from your company, in particular monetarily, it focuses on how to perform usability testing with a large degree of constraints – how to do it cheaply, how to do it quickly (just one morning a month) & how to get people interested through pastry!
“will need to start”
Because of its small size, Krug’s book is only designed as an introduction to usability testing, and won’t contain any new information if you’ve done this before. At best you could pick up a few best practises, but you’re not the intended audience. Just for you, the book has suggestions for further reading “for overachievers only”, with some interesting books to continue studying this field, but the book is largely aimed at newcomers to the field.
“performing usability testing”
Also due to its brevity, the book only covers one on one think aloud tests with websites, and only hints that other forms of usability testing possible. The book ends with a short chapter on remote research, but only hints at the possibilities that we saw at the UX Brighton event. Other types of usability research, such as quantitative methods, expert analysis, or focus groups, are left out entirely of the books remit. Although the book offers a complete solution, it’s a complete solution for one particular type of usability testing, and only covers websites (although the skills could easily be applied elsewhere).
Its not rocket scien.... oh.
Conclusion
Krug’s new book is short, and simple. However neither of these points are negative. It’s short because it has to be, to introduce a wide audience to usability testing, and to emphasise how easy it is to begin. It’s simple, because usability testing can be simple, and done for just a morning a month. If you’re someone who has been doing usability testing for years, or a professional who does a large amount of usability testing, perhaps it’s better to look elsewhere. However if you’re looking for an introduction to usability testing, having never donae it before, or just need a short walkthrough guide to getting usability testing started at your workplace, Krug’s book should definitely be your first choice.
A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Ralph Koster – Book Review
Koster’s book isn’t written explicitly for user experience professionals, but it covers a subject in which we should be very interested – what is ‘fun’ in games, and what makes a game fun? Since we are involved in crafting a positive player experience, it is a topic that we should care deeply about, and A Theory of Fun for Game Design aims to deepen our understanding of what makes a fun game.
The most obvious thing that strikes you about Koster’s book is the tone, and the format – despite it being said that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, the cover of this book, a notepad covered in doodles, is a preview of the format of the book. The book is written in a personal, conversational tone, and every page of text has a corresponding picture page, with a hand drawn doodle, serving to summarise the text next to it. It’s immediately clear this is not an academic book, and this makes it all the more useful to people trying to understand fun in video games.
Reflecting the light tone, and doodled illustrations is the books approach to the subject. Koster is not interested in an academic definition of fun, instead he wants to know why it exists, why games can be fun (or dull), and how we can improve a player’s experience of fun with the game.
These guys are having so much fun, they don't even have to plug the controllers in!
To understand fun, A Theory of Fun for Game Design starts with cognition theory, explaining how the brain works, and what it enjoys. These chapters essentially condense down to an understanding that the brain enjoys challenge, and learning how to overcome these challenges (‘grokking’). Successful games give sufficient opportunity to learn, and then challenges the player by offering variations of application for the learnt skill. For an example of this, consider jumping in Mario – the player learns to jump over a hole, then many holes, then holes that spit lava, then holes where the landing space is moving, then holes where the landing area disappears, then all of the above together! By challenging the player to stretch their application of the new skill they’ve learnt, the game continues to be fun.
Games are an important medium, as they can offer this opportunity to challenge in a direct manner, which other mediums can only abstractly offer. Hence, games can be used to teach life skills – how to aim, how to gamble, how to win. Koster offers an explanation to why these are common goals in games due a cultural background of power and hierarchy – human’s have evolved needing to fight, and win, and games offer a way to learn and challenge these skills (as do sports).
So why are some games boring? Koster tells us that games fail to be fun either when we’ve learnt everything they have to teach, or we feel we are not learning anything from the game. Games that are too hard are ‘boring’, as the learning is above our ability. Games where all the main elements are learnt early on, without variation through the later levels, get boring early, as we’ve learnt everything. This can be seen in Assassin’s Creed, where reviews often commented on it being repetitive – you’ve seen everything there is to see in the first hour. As people interested in user experience, we can see the value here for longer play test sessions with real players, to uncover the long term appeal of games.
Pictured: Not Fun.
The latter half of the book considers the question of whether games are art, and what they need to achieve to become art. Currently the book identifies games as offering only a choice between ‘fun’ and ‘boredom’. When they move beyond this medium, and become open to interpretation, and a way to teach us about ourselves, they will become art. Perhaps we can see the beginning of this development in great introspective games, like Deus Ex, Half Life 2, or Lego Rock Band.
Ultimately, for user experience practitioners, this book will not change how you do your job. It won’t give you set rules on how to make a game more fun, or on what to do to discover whether something is fun. However it will give you a deeper understanding of why some games are fun, why some games are boring, and give an ethos for improving the player experience. And it might just change how you think.
