Heuristic usability evaluation on games: a modular approach

Abstract

Heuristic evaluation is the preferred method to assess usability in games when experts conduct this evaluation. Many heuristics guidelines have been proposed attending to specificities of games but they only focus on specific subsets of games or platforms. In fact, to date the most used guideline to evaluate games usability is still Nielsen's proposal, which is focused on generic software. As a result, most evaluations do not cover important aspects in games such as mobility, multiplayer interactions, enjoyability and playability, etc. To promote the usage of new heuristics adapted to different game and platform aspects we propose a modular approach based on the classification of existing game heuristics using metadata and a tool, MUSE (Meta-heUristics uSability Evaluation tool) for games, which allows a rebuild of heuristic guidelines based on metadata selection in order to obtain a customized list for every real evaluation case. The usage of these new rebuilt heuristic guidelines allows an explicit attendance to a wide range of usability aspects in games and a better detection of usability issues. We preliminarily evaluate MUSE with an analysis of two different games, using both the Nielsen's heuristics and the customized heuristic lists generated by our tool.

Non-empirical ISO 9241-210:2019-based usability evaluation using fuzzy inference analyser: a special issue on interactive social robots

“…In recent years, several review studies have been conducted on usability evaluation methods (Davis et al, 2020;Li et al, 2019;Rauf et al, 2019;Vargas Caceres et al, 2018;Wronikowska et al, 2021). Recently, some of these expert-based techniques have proposed new models of evaluation factors (Lee and Lee, 2019;Veral and Macias, 2019), some extended methods include new heuristics (Othman et al, 2018;Yanez-Gomez et al, 2019). Some have evaluated usability in a new generation of software engineering (Memedi et al, 2018;Rahmat et al, 2018), and others have integrated expert-based techniques and used machine learning techniques to predict several usability factors based on expert opinion (Imel et al, 2019;Ponce et al, 2018).…”

A Framework of the Training Module for Untrained Observers in Usability Evaluation Motivated by COVID-19: Enhancing the Validity of Usability Evaluation for Children’s Educational Games

“…e heuristic evaluation method, conducted by experts, is one of the preferred methods for assessing the usability of games. Most of the modular heuristic evaluations are conducted using Neilson's proposals that focus on software [6,7]. Recent research by [8], in which a systematic review on heuristics was conducted, have reported that the heuristics and usability of educational games still offer potential for exploration in specific evaluation and validation of the process.…”

An Integrated Model for Evaluation of Big Data Interactive Systems Under Uncertainty

“…Som e of the m ost com m on expert -based u sability assessm ent m ethod s inclu d e review ing gu id es based on interaction d esign gu id elines, innovative assessm ent, cognitive e nhancem ents, u sage paths, form al u sability inspections, and innovative m arches [15]. Recently, these experts-based techniqu es have becom e extend ed throu gh proposing new m od els of evalu ation fa ctors [16]; [17], new heu ristics [18]; [19], u sability evalu ation in a new generation of softw are [20]; [21], integration of expert-based techniqu es and u sing m achine learning techniqu es to pred ictive several u sability factors based on expert' opinion [22]; [55]. As w e d iscu ssed , the expert-based u sability evalu ation in the literatu re is com pletely static.…”