based on Game Usability: Advancing the Player Experience (Ch. 6)

Heuristics is another way of saying “the rule of thumb”. They are guidelines that evaluators could use, in order to rapidly identify common issues in game design. The first attempt at compiling a set of heuristics was done by Jacob Nielsen.

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Popularity: 12% [?]

Microsoft has integrated TRUE as part of their user research to measure “user initiated events” (UIEs) to better understand user behavior. UIEs are not new, and have been used by behaviorist psychologist such as B.F. Skinner to understand animal behavior. In his implementation, called the “Skinner Box” he was able to have many advantages to other measuring tools lacked.

• It did not require an experimenter.
• It improved reliability by reducing experimenter interaction with the animal.
• It could accurately record behavior over a long period of time

Solutions such as Skinner’s where rather simple, however with the combination of larger amounts of data, and more complex systems there has been a growing need to come up with a method of dealing with the massive quantities of data and displaying it in a manner that is interpretable.
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Popularity: 11% [?]

based on my reading of Game Usability: Advancing the Player Experience (Ch. 4)

Microsoft has been in the business of applying usability strategies to their production software, for over 25 years. They have since adjusted these methods to fit with their XBox gaming initiatives. Games bring a unique set of challenges, which include:

• Purchase and use of games is discretionary, unlike production software that used out of necessity to fulfill a task.
• Games is a tough market where almost 80% lose money.
• There are many game studios and publishers. This is different to production software where there is usually a few leaders in the field.
• Games are complex and can involve artificial intelligence and other higher level programming.
• Games are popular.
• Games are big business. In 2006, game revenue hit 7.4 billion, not including hardware.
• Wide range of application which include entertainment, education and others.
• Game attempt to create novel, unique experience for users, unlike production software that simply automates existing tasks.
• Games have a development cycles that is very conducive to user testing. It consist of on iterative environment that allows for fine tuning user experience, before it goes out on the market. Production software, sometimes take the “Google”, and let their application loose to wild once there is a usable build.
• Game developers are dedicated to create positive great user experiences.
• Gamers demand novelty. Unlike productivity software users that aren’t as welcoming to major shifts is user interface since it will present learning curves.
• Game experience is based on game mechanics. This is what influences a users pattern of behavior, also known as the game’s dynamics.

Usability Testing vs Play Testing

User testing allows researcher to uncover patterns of user behavior that aren’t part of the game designer’s intent. This could include how long a task took to complete, or the frequency and nature of an error. (section 4.3.1, para. 1) Play testing is a bit different in focus. It is concerned with a player’s opinions and attitudes for a game. It is important to include play testing in the mix of product development, because behavioral data alone can not adequately answer questions like “is the game fun?”
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Popularity: 9% [?]

based on my reading of Game Usability: Advancing the Player Experience (Ch. 3)

Chapter three of Game Usability: Advancing the Player Experience contains an interesting interview between Tobi Saulnier, founder and CEO of 1st Playable Productions and Kathrine Ibister, User Researcher and author of the aforementioned book.

The result of the dialog surfaces some very interesting and practical reasons for the implementation of user research. To start, Tobi Saulnier, take the perspective of the small game development agency. 1st Playable Productions specialized in kids games, and has integrated play testing into all phases of development.
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Popularity: 4% [?]

based on my reading of Game Usability: Advancing the Player Experience (Chapter 2)

Game development and traditional production software development share various similarities. However, unlike production software, measures such as efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction are not enough for success. Although this may sound like common sense, when large amounts of money are at stake, there is some convincing that will be necessary with both management and developers. A few of the key points that are mentioned on “Game Usability: Advancing the Player Experience” are, justifying return on investment, formalizing work procedures, and building cross-professional relationships.
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Popularity: 3% [?]

based on my reading of Game Usability: Advancing the Player Experience (Chapter 1)

Why Game Research?
A new generation of gamers has expanded at a rapid pace. The doors have flung open with new consumer demographics that have never had much of an influence in the gaming industry. This being said, game developers and publisher have the opportunity to reach a broader audience and stay competitive in the gaming industry.

Traditionally, the typical gamer’s user profiles shared many commonalities with the designers that created them. This allowed them to rely on gut intuition to make design decision. However, with the introduction of other genres such as social and casual gaming, this is no longer the case.(Isbister, 2008, Chapter 1, Section 1.1, para. 2) To appeal to a larger more diverse audience game designers need to make more informed decision.
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Popularity: 3% [?]

It is that time of year again. Looking through websites for the perfect present for all those people on my Christmas list. For me, the best part of the entire experience is checking out all the wonderful toys that are out, and living vicariously through the kids that i buy them for. Typically i try to put some effort into buying toys that I feel have some productive value and are fun. I also try my best not to buy into the glitzy commercials and Hollywood productions that some toys have.

Reflecting on my own toys from my youth, there are only a handful of toys that really resonate with me. Most of these toys had aspects of construction. For example I loved GI Joe, but my clearest memory of interacting with them where building the vehicles with my dad, not actually playing with them. I loved playing with my Domino Rally Set, and create Rube Goldberg type creations. Then, of course there is the popular Lego construction kit that has withstood the test of time.

The bellow video, is far beyond I ever created with my Domino Rally set, but was very impressed!

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Popularity: 12% [?]

A local teacher asked me a question that immediately took me back to my childhood. “How do you help an eager non-English speaking parent, not feel helpless when their children come home with homework?” According to her, these parents want to do the very best for their kids, however their lack of understanding the English language is not allowing them to be as involved as they would like to be.
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Popularity: 14% [?]

Being a first time dad has been the most amazing experience of my life. Watching my daughter grow, and witnessing her constant exploration of the world around her has been extraordinary. Unfortunately when Mondays roll around, it is time for me and many other parents to drop off our kids at the babysitter.  The amount of time we get to interact with each other is very minimal, and pretty sad.

In a world where we all feel so “connected”, the people that matter most have no method of remotely interacting with us.  My 1 1/2 year has no twitter, or Facebook account to update.  She doesn’t check into fourSquare every time we go to grandma’s house. Even with mobile phones and Skype video conferencing, there is no direct method of me interacting with her without the assistance and supervision of an adult. So basically, we could only interact with each other when another adult has both the time and is willing to put in the effort to set up an environment for us to communicate.

This got me thinking “how can my daughter and I interact during my work hours?”  The first thing I did was identify the main characteristics of my daughter, back when I first started working on this project:

• My daughter was one year old.
• Her vocal communication ability was in the preliminary stages of development
• Her motor skills where still not fully developed, so complex tasks like using a keyboard or mouse where not possible.
• She needs adult assistance to use our everyday communication tools that available to us (moble and land-line phones, computers, etc).

At this young age, children are extremely dependent on their parents and other adults for just about everything.  However, there are also several activities that come as naturally as breathing and eating to a child. Two of those activities that i observed where exploration and play, many times triggered by a common catalyst of curiosity.

Children gradually explore their environment and toys and interacted with them, mastering the new skills that they learn along the way. Quickly they are able to identify all sorts of toy input locations which triggered various types of output, such as audio and visual feedback.
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Popularity: 6% [?]

In a recent project I was forced to dynamically generating UI Elements in flex from Strings. This is typically done using getDefinitionByName() as shown bellow. Although this works, in my app I never really know what the string is, nor do I know what the Class is named or where it is located. This becomes an issue since you must make reference to the Class somewhere in your code before it is available to the Flex framework.

This example shows the typical use of getDefinitionByName() with out any external SWC. Notice the imports and class references on the top of the Script block.

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< ?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mx:application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" layout="vertical" xmlns:controls="com.controls.*">
 
	<mx:script>
		< ![CDATA[
			import flash.utils.getDefinitionByName;
 
                       //You must import the classes and instantiate them
			import com.controls.TestControlA;TestControlA;
			import com.controls.TestControlB;TestControlB;
 
			private function loadTestClass(name:String):void
			{
			var ClassReference:Class = getDefinitionByName(name) as Class;
           		var s:DisplayObject = (new ClassReference() as DisplayObject)
           		testContainer.addChild(s);
			}
		]]>
	</mx:script>
 
	<mx:vbox id="testContainer" />
 
	<mx:hbox id="buttonBar">
<!--You have to place the entire package location in the string-->
		<mx:button label="Test A" click="loadTestClass('com.controls.TestControlA')" />
		<mx:button label="Test B" click="loadTestClass('com.controls.TestControlB')" />
	</mx:hbox>
</mx:application>

This won’t work since I need to make a reference to Classes that I won’t know the names of till run-time. My first step was to move a control into an external SWC, however I still am forced to make reference to the class so it becomes available, or I will get an error. This is a no go.

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Popularity: 7% [?]