Designing the User Experience of Game Development Tools by David Lightbown

Author:David Lightbown
Language: rus
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Publisher: A K Peters/CRC Press
Published: 2015-02-17T22:00:00+00:00

68 ◾ Designing the User Experience of Game Development Tools Goals

Goals

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Mental Models

Mental Models

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FIGURE 4.21 Example personas.

It is also important to give each persona a realistic name and a natural-looking picture. For example, giving a persona the name “Moe the

Modeler” and using a cartoon character as a photo will result in people

not taking the personas seriously.*

Personas created to represent users of a game development tool might

look something like Figure 4.21.

Scenario Storyboards

To create an even deeper understanding of context, you can also choose

to create scenario storyboards. Scenario storyboards resemble the sto-

ryboards we use when planning a game cinematic (see Figure 4.22). The

FIGURE 4.22 Example scenario storyboard.

* You can auto- generate realistic names and pictures from websites like http://www.randomuser.

me, or you can use a more complete persona creation solution with tools such as http://www.

usabilitytools.com/ features- benefits/ persona- creator.

Analysis ◾ 69

purpose of a scenario is to explore how the tool is used in a variety of contexts. They are very useful for ensuring that everyone involved in the development of the tool understands and agrees on how the tool is supposed to be used.

How to Create Scenario Storyboards

To create a scenario storyboard, first choose one or more user goals or

tasks. If you have also created personas, you can choose to feature them in the scenario storyboard. Each frame in the storyboard depicts an action

performed by the personas while they are using the tool, and it ends in the successful completion of their task or goals.*

Scenario storyboards do not include references to the user interface.

Instead, they show how the personas would interact with the user objects.

This keeps the scenario storyboards at a high level so that they do not

influence us into assuming that the interface must function or look a certain way. This enables us to focus on finding the best possible design solution to achieve the users’ goals.

The quality of the drawings is not important. However, if you need some

assistance producing storyboards, many web- based tools are available.†

WRAPPING UP

In this chapter, we learned about the Analysis phase of the User- Centered Design process. We discussed the value of watching users work, the limitations of metrics and focus groups, and the importance of thinking in

terms of the problems that we are trying to solve (not the features we want to implement). We also learned about human– computer interaction, the

action cycle, its effects on efficiency and learnability, as well as the concept of the user’s mental model. Finally, we learned a variety of techniques to be used during the Analysis phase, such as interviewing stakeholders, performing contextual analyses, creating task flows, and establish-

ing measurements.

In the next chapter, we will discuss concepts and techniques to be used

during the Design phase of the User- Centered Design process.

* For more on creating scenarios, you can also read Chapter 6 of Cooper, Reinmann, and Cronin’s book About Face 3.

† Storyboard That (http:/ www.storyboardthat.com/) and Amazon Storyteller (http:/ studios.amazon.

com/ storyteller) are two popular examples.

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