games user research, user experience and flow
TRANSCRIPT
Games User Research, User Experience, and
FlowLennart Nacke, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
CC by Lennart Nacke/Flickrwww.hcigames.com, @acagamic, [email protected]
Electrodermal Activity• EDA
• Primary index of arousal
• Increased sweat gland activity
• Sympathetic nervous system
Facial Electromyography• EMG • Muscle contraction result in electrical activity • Primary index of hedonic valence
Brow muscle (negative valence)
Periocular muscle (high arousal, positive valence)
Cheek muscle (positive valence)
C3 CMS DRLCz C4
F3 F4
FC5 FC1 FC2 FC6
Fz
Pz
Oz
P4
AF4
Fp2
PO4
O2O1
CP2
F8
T8T7
P8
CP6
PO3
P3P7
CP1CP5
AF3
F7
Fp1
Chatrian, G. E., Lettich, E., & Nelson, P. L. (1988). Modified nomenclature for the "10%" electrode system. Journal of Clinical Neurophysiology: Official Publication of the American Electroencephalographic Society, 5(2), 183-186.
Frontal (F)
Parietal (P)
Occipital (O)
Temporal (T)Central (C)
Odd Numbers Even Numbers
Electroencephalography
Psychophysiological Inference
• Body and Mind Relations • One-to-one • One-to-many • Many-to-one • Many-to-many • Null relations
• Measure operation and activity of • Muscles • Nerve cells • Glands
What's Flow?• Concentration focused on present moment
• Action and consciousness merge
• Self-awareness lost
• Full control over your actions
• Distorted time perception
• The activity is rewarding in itself
Synthesis of Flow ModelsModel Effectance Identification Transportation Mental
Workload
Csiksz.Action
awareness, control
Self-awareness lost
Concentration time distort.
JonesClear goals, feedback,
controlSelf-concern
lostEffortless
involvement
Task completion, focused att.
CowleyChallenge,
control, clear goals, feedb.
Identity, self-awareness weakened
Immersion Challenge, less time perception
Sweetser et alChallenge,
skills, control, clear goals, fb
Immersion Concentration challenge skills
Biometric Storyboards• A single User Experience
(UX) graph • Intended UX • Actual UX
• Comparison study (N=24) of different player testing approaches
Pejman Mirza-Babaei, Lennart E. Nacke, John Gregory, Nick Collins, and Geraldine Fitzpatrick. 2013. How does it play better?: exploring user testing and biometric storyboards in games user research. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '13). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1499-1508. DOI=10.1145/2470654.2466200
Repidly• Online tool to
review experience
• Rapid evaluation
• Annotate videos and physiological signals
Bachelor’s Thesis project from Mike Schaekermann
Repidly• Easy to associate
game events with physiological events
• Rapid annotation
Bachelor’s Thesis project from Mike Schaekermann
Player Data Visualization
• Mixed visualization of qualitative and quantitative player data overlaid on top of a level
• The overall hue of the paths conveys areas with high (B and C) and low (A) player arousal
Pejman Mirza-Babaei, Günter Wallner, Graham McAllister, and Lennart E. Nacke. 2014. Unified visualization of quantitative and qualitative playtesting data. In CHI '14 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1363-1368. DOI=10.1145/2559206.2581224
DEVELOPER GUIDELINES1. Use visual experience representations whenever
possible.
2. Give players functionality to annotate their own experience, physiological or otherwise.
3. Set individual threshold markers when trying to track down emotional moments.
4. Tie player performance to spatial player information and virtual locations to improve design.
DEVELOPER GUIDELINES5. When researching game flow, simplify the
dimensions to facilitate experience coding.
6. Built tools that provide quick and actionable insights, do not overemphasize theory.
7. Allow user researchers to drill down deep into your data at points of particular interest.
8. Facilitate inter-developer collaboration, especially between games user research and game design.
Thank youContact me at…
@acagamic (Twitter)
www.hcigames.com
uwaterloo.ca/games-institute/
www.immerse-network.com