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…
read moreUser testing is important in every aspect of the design process. Too often it’s thought of as a stage, near the end of design, to help make a product look nice. But it should be much more than that. Not only can it tell you what a product should look like, or how it should…
read moreAs a practitioner of usability or user experience, a common way that you will attempt to investigate a user (or player, or customer)’s perceptions is through Often used to gauge opinions, they are especially important for people involved with measuring usability or player experience, as they can help quantify subjective things like a user’s experiences.…
read morePersonae (or personas if you prefer) are an important part of a user centered design process, and one of the key ways in which usability experts can communicate their findings. I’m going to look at how to make a persona, and what the advantages are to you, and the design team How to make a…
read moreVideo game developers around the country are missing a cheap, easy, and useful aspect of running player experience tests by not videoing the players being tested. I believe recording players gives a better understanding of how people experience games, and I’m going to explain why this leads to the development of better games. Recently I’ve…
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