Designing for Fun: User-Testing Case Studies

Abstract

When we originally wrote this chapter, one of my goals was to establish some awareness (and possibly even some credibility) in two different directions. As psychology researchers born out of academia and the Human-Computer Interaction/Human Factors fields, very few of our research colleagues (if any) were talking about applying or adapting existing HCI/HF methodologies into the world of video games. Common conversations at that time revolved around silly debates for the appropriate sample size for a usability test as opposed to challenges that arise when faced with creating an experience that is ‘appropriately difficult’. This makes sense though, because why would an established field like HCI focus on unique challenges seen in video games when games weren’t seen as a legit form of computing? The idea of someone from a video games studio, publisher, or console maker showing up at a CHI conference was unheard of. At the same time, the video games world was largely unfamiliar with the techniques or approaches to user-centered design thinking that have matured from the 1980s up to that point. The closest anyone would come to user research was “playtesting”, which was still a term in the video games industry referring to bringing in your best friends to play your unfinished game in return for some pizza. In addition, anything that involved an actual customer was lovingly called a ‘focus test’ driven from marketing. Thus, we, at Microsoft, and a handful of others, straddled an interesting existential misery of not really fitting on either side of this equation. We were strangers in a foreign land.