This document summarizes a presentation about using psychophysiological measures and tools to study user experience in games. It discusses measuring electrodermal activity and facial electromyography to understand arousal and valence. It also explains Csikszentmihalyi's concept of flow and models of flow. Further, it presents biometric storyboards to visualize intended and actual user experience, the Repidly tool for annotating physiological signals, and mixed visualizations of qualitative and quantitative player data. Finally, it provides developer guidelines for applying these techniques.
2. Games User Research,
User Experience, and
Flow
Lennart Nacke, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
CC by Lennart Nacke/Flickr
www.hcigames.com, @acagamic, lennart.nacke@acm.org
3. About me
• Associate Professor
• Director of the HCI Games Group at the University of Waterloo
11. 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
12. Synthesis of Flow Models
Model Effectance Identification Transportation
Mental
Workload
Csiksz.
Action
awareness,
control
Self-awareness
lost
Concentration
time distort.
Jones
Clear goals,
feedback,
control
Self-concern
lost
Effortless
involvement
Task
completion,
focused att.
Cowley
Challenge,
control, clear
goals, feedb.
Identity, self-
awareness
weakened
Immersion
Challenge, less
time perception
Sweetser et al
Challenge,
skills, control,
clear goals, fb
Immersion
Concentration
challenge skills
13.
14. 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, NewYork, NY, USA, 1499-1508. DOI=10.1145/2470654.2466200
15. Repidly
• Online tool to
review experience
• Rapid evaluation
• Annotate videos
and physiological
signals
Bachelor’sThesis project from Mike Schaekermann
16. Repidly
• Easy to associate
game events with
physiological
events
• Rapid annotation
Bachelor’sThesis project from Mike Schaekermann
17. 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, NewYork, NY, USA, 1363-1368. DOI=10.1145/2559206.2581224
18. DEVELOPER GUIDELINES
1. 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.
19. DEVELOPER GUIDELINES
5. 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.
20. Thank you
Contact me at…
len@uwaterloo.ca
@acagamic (Twitter)
www.hcigames.com
uwaterloo.ca/games-institute/
www.immerse-network.com