The Quest for Usable Usability Heuristics for Game Developers

Abstract

Human Computer Interaction (HCI) research has provided many processes and methods for ensuring good usability during software development. The importance of usability in games has been acknowledged. However, there is a lack of research examining usability activities during actual game development and the suitability of different usability methods for different phases of game development. Game development industry, although growing fast and already including certain large and successful companies, consists of a huge number of small-to-medium-sized enterprises and start-ups. For these companies, practical, developer-oriented tools for ensuring game usability are needed, as these companies do not have resources for hiring usability specialists for taking care of usability. This paper reviews the concept of game usability and existing research on usability methods for game development. In addition, the paper proposes a set of usable usability heuristics as a practical, developer-oriented tool to be used during the game development process as well as reports on a small-scale survey study on game usability, heuristic evaluation and usability of usability heuristics in game development.

Studi Tentang Game Usability Pada In-app Game Untuk Meningkatkan Engagement Pengguna E-commerce

“…Mempertimbangkan evaluasi mengenai user engagement, maka pada poin heuristik kedua mengenai kemudahan dan kesenangan bermain, ditambahkan pertanyaan yang mengarah kepada perasaan bersemangat atau kalah saat menghadapi tantangan dalam game [18] serta kejelasan goal permainan [18,19] untuk lebih menajamkan objektif dari poin tersebut.…”

Heuristic Evaluation of a Mobile Game Developed to Help Battle the Pandemic

“…Tools used by developers tend to be rather traditional and include approaches such as questionnaires, interviews, and observations [3,4]. Game developers also use expert evaluation methods, but more sparingly, as they are less popular despite being rapid, cheap, and effective ways to identify usability methods [5][6][7]. The key point of using expert evaluations is to catch usability issues early in the development process when they are less costly to fix [5][6][7].…”

“…Game developers also use expert evaluation methods, but more sparingly, as they are less popular despite being rapid, cheap, and effective ways to identify usability methods [5][6][7]. The key point of using expert evaluations is to catch usability issues early in the development process when they are less costly to fix [5][6][7]. Typical expert evaluation methods include heuristic evaluations, expert panels, cognitive walkthroughs, and focus groups [3,4].…”

“…Typical expert evaluation methods include heuristic evaluations, expert panels, cognitive walkthroughs, and focus groups [3,4]. While researchers have developed heuristics lists for games, developers often design heuristics to fit their own needs [3,5]. In this paper, we use a specific heuristic evaluation method designed for mobile games [8].…”

“…The professional game reviews and online gamer communities ensure that a game with bad usability gains a bad reputation, which will damage its sales [25,28]. To introduce better usability into the game development context, literature proposes many different methods [5,19,27,29,30,31,32].…”