Week Summary: 18/5 - 22/5 + 25/5 - 29/5

After two weeks absence, it's time for a return of the week review! The last two weeks have been quite busy. We've finally finished the last user test, and a first version analysis of the results can be found here in the blog. Last week was spent in stockholm taking part in some user tests at DICE and interviewing various employees at the company about the role of the UI designer, done in order to shape our guidelines in the best way possible. This was quite rewarding for us.

This week, we're looking at the guidelines and we've already got a rough outline for them. On friday we will meet Staffan to discuss this and the report. Looking forward, the coming weeks will be quite documentation-heavy, which might result in less activity blog-wise than before.

Over and out.

Week Summary: 11/5 - 15/5

We interrupted our planned user study for last week half-way through, as the questions were formulated in a way that demanded a bit too much introspection and interpretation of the test participants. We judged it to be worth the time to rethink the test, so this week we are back with the same test, but new questions that put less mental demand on the participants answering them.. which should give us much more qualitative results.

Simultaneously, the outline for the thesis report draws closer to what we think will be the final form, and we've produced some text as well.

Week Summary: 4/5 - 8/5

Another set of user tests have been performed, this week regarding the player-avatar sensory link and especially the way FPS games communicate the feeling of being damaged, and how this is connected to what we call meta-perception. Some of the early conclusions from this test can be viewed in the previous post.

For next week, we will hold our last set of user tests, concerning player interaction with the game space/world, how affordances allowed by the rule framework is communicated by games (Dead Space and Resident Evil 5 are the games used for the test), and player attitude towards different UI strategies regarding this. On monday we will also have a short meeting with Staffan discussing the report outline for the thesis.

Until then, take care and grow lots of plants in case of a zombie invasion!

Week Summary 27/4-30/4

Another short week (and another sweet holiday!). This week we finished our first batch of user tests (5 of them). This resulted in both an interview study and in a lot of interesting observations.

Now we have again secured a Playstation 3 in order to conduct the next set of tests - concerning "meta (or "in game") perception". These tests will start on Monday.

Hypotheses testing (Week Summary 20/4-24/4)

This week we have been creating and conducting game tests in order to validate some of our hypothesis concerning fps UI solutions.

Our first test concerns (short-term) navigation. Our hypotesis is that a spatial navigational aid like Runner's Vision in ME are perferable to solutions like the one in BioShock (and perhaps that the beacons in ME's time trial mode are the most usefull - but might be considered to intrusive outside the scope of a highly competetive game mode.)

In this test players get to play the first level in Mirror's edge in order to experience navigating with the help of Runner's Vision. Next they get to try a segment of the next level, with RV turned off. After that they get to try playing a time-trial level, and navigate using the (much less subtle) beacons.

Finally they get to play the first 15-20 minutes of BioShock in order to experience navigating both with and without the games "Golden Compass".

After each short sessions the player will be interviewed about their experience with each navigational aid. How well they conveyed where to go, their level of intrusiveness, their level of helpfullness/usefullness and so on.

The second test is about "Meta Perception" - This time the players get to play brief, action packed episodes of Call of Duty 4, Battlefield BC, Killzone 2 and Halo 3 in short succession. The goal is to familiarize players with four quite different solutions of how to indicate that the player is taking damage (and the direction from where it originates). Players will then get to rank the games and elaborate around how well the solutions conveyed a sens of damage/injury/danger.

Our hypothesis in this case is; the more visceral the experience of being hurt the more immersive the game experience.

Week Summary: 14/4-17/4

So... A bit of a short week this time around due to the Easter Holiday. This week we met with Staffan to discuss our progress and plan for what our next steps are going to be. We have formulated a few hypothesis that we intend to validate by letting people play games with different UI solutions and interviewing them about their experiences. This way we can get to terms with a lot of "soft" information about how players feel about one solution compared to another.

We want to compare Bio shock and Mirror's Edge (with and without R.V.) when it comes to short term navigation and Battlefield BC and Call of Duty 4 (in hardcore mode) when it comes to competitive multiplayer.

Next week well set up the test cases and hopefully get going with the actual testing.

week Summary: 6/4-(10/4)

This week we have slowly but surely started to convert our models into useful guidelines for UI design choices. We started with looking at a way of analyzing a game (or game concept) using a three level system in order to determine the best UI and HUD strategies.

Also, we have looked at a way of dividing information into either state-feedback or affordance amplifiers and how this relates to the HUD and the role of an UI(interaction)designer.

Last but not least, two brief concept descriptions have been created to illustrate possible approaches to FPS UI's.

Next week we plant to finaly have a meeting with Staffan and to start doing some more user studies - this time we plan to do extensive play testing using games, already on the market, with different interesting UI solutions in the hope of learning more about what players prefer.

-Happy Easter Zombie Jesus!

Week Summary: 23/3 - 27/3, 30/3 - 3/4

The first days of last week was spent in Stockholm partly brainstorming and getting some insights on user testing, which was an interesting thing to experience. The rest of the last two weeks have been spent tearing down some old walls regarding our design space and our model for distinguishing FPS games from each other (mimicry/competition/vertigo tied to frames) - this is still work in progress, but the last ten blog posts or so are quite illustrative for where we might go. Currently, we feel that fiction and rules is something that should be taken into account - these could somehow be said to be related to mimicry and competition, although it's not the whole truth which makes the process of taking these notions into account a little bit of a bumpy ride. However, as we get nearer a final model of understanding, we feel that we also get nearer the design guidelines that will be a part of the deliverables for this thesis.

We have also thought about different strategies for prototyping ideas (with the aim of user testing them), this according to an earlier post. Next week, we will have a meeting with Staffan, which will hopefully help us wrap things up and move on to new, fresh grounds.

Week Summary: 16/3 - 20/3

So we're done with our initial user studies! Yesterday we held a two hour focus group in which different UI approaches (examples were taken from games such as Mirror's Edge, Dead Space, Battlefield: Bad Company, Call of Duty 5, etc.) were discussed from a immersion/engrossment point of view, and the results that we've analyzed so far seem to strengthen the models we've previously layed forth.. which of course feels really neat.

Besides from this, we've looked at how a slightly modified design space might be motivated regarding the scope of our thesis, as well as taken a more deep look on how semiotics might be related to the immersion of game UIs. This according to previous posts.

The first two days of next week will be spent in Stockholm brainstorming with Anna, and the rest of the week will probably be spent analyzing the focus group results and how this might affect our future planning.

Week Summary: 9/3-13/3

This week we started to evaluate our model of FPS UI's and their relations to player frames. To do this we recruited some fellow gamers among students at the it-university and held one-to-one interviews with them.

These interviews were conducted very casually in what is called a semi-structured fashion.
We had a few topics we wanted to address, but other than that the interviewees were free to wander off topic from time to time. The interviews were recorded and transcribed and interesting quotes were compiled into a document for further analysis.

The results from these interviews looks very promising and seem to strengthen some of our notions of how the relevance of certain information carriers in the UI differ depending on frame(s) and game category. This framework is something that will be very helpful when constructing guidelines.

Other than this we have stumbled upon some interesting research form finland that to some extent deals with the same things we have been thinking about these last few weeks.

Next week we hope to host a focus group (consisting of the people we interviewed) were we all can discuss the ins and outs of FPS UIs. Most of all we want to address the effect of increased amounts of diegetic information carriers and the pros and cons of using Hud elements with spatial components.

Week Summary: 23/2 - 27/2

A rather slow week in terms of blog posts, however stuff is happening behind the scenes! Our analysis of the literature and game studies have resulted in the following hypothesis: we believe that a player engrossment/immersion model can be created using Caillois' taxonomy of games (competition, mimicry, vertigo, chance) and Goffman's/Fine's notion of frames (person/player/character), and that this is reflected in the game UI and the diegesis-spatiality of conveyed information.

During hopefully not more than 2 weeks, we will spend some time conducting a number (the current plan is six) of interviews and a focus group (with the interviewees) with the purpose of determining whether this hypothesis is true or not. We had a meeting with Staffan yesterday, during which we decided to pick interviewees from Staffan's group of game design students. We sent out a recruitment mail today, and so far two persons have responded.

Week Summary: 16/2 - 20/2

We have started to put our written material into a report document.

As we feel that we want a good ground for testing and verifying our ideas about how FPS UIs can strengthen engrossment/immersion, we have looked at what underlying motivations players have for playing games. So far, Caillois taxonomy of games seem to be the model that suits us best. Tying these motivations to Gary Alan Fine's game framing theories forms a possible model for understanding in which situations usage of certain UI strategies are appropriate.

As for the up-coming week, we will attempt to find a format for our initial hypotheses (i.e. that different UI solutions are appropriate depending on the type of game, etc.), think about how to conduct qualitative user-studies in which we will evaluate these initial hypotheses, and let the report outline evolve as more text join in.

Week Summary: 9/1-13/1

This week we met with both Anna and Staffan (separetly) to discuss the results from the first few weeks of work. Their feedback were very positive and has given us some important things to address in the coming week.

We also helped out at this years CHARM exhibit and borrowed a PS3 system from the nice people at DICE, in order to finish up our objective game study. By analyzing the PS3 exclusive games Killzone2, Haze and Resistance2 we'll be taking the list of games up to a nice and even 20 as well as addressing the lack of PS3 exclusive titles in the study.

Other than that, we'v sent a small design document to Anna and have done some interesting reading in books we borrowed from Staffan (see earlier posts).

Week Summary: 2/2 - 6/2

This week started off with a tutoring meeting with Staffan, and a first attempt of analyzing the results of the objective game study so far. To this date we've included 17 games in our objective game study, a number we've judged is sufficient to start looking on what can be deduced out of the results so far.

During a phone meeting with Anna on the Tuesday, it was decided that we will sit down next week and discuss our results so far and the activities for next phase of the project.

We start to feel that the results of our literature study are converging, and as a result we have made a first attempt to map out the design space (see previous post). The notion of the week is semiotics, something we feel will be an important part of our project.

The subjective game study is coming along fine as well; we've got quite an extensive list of games with interesting design choices regarding UI information, a list that we hope to expand even further, especially regarding interesting uses of audio.

We've produced some mighty fine charts to illustrate our results and analysis described above, included in previous posts.

Time to enjoy the weekend. Over and out.

Week Summary: 26/1-30/1

This week we dug into the world of comics, film and role playing games (Both Live action and pen and paper) in search of interesting input, ideas and in order to expand our vocabulary and understanding of ways of communicating meaning to the viewer/player.

All three of these subjects gave unexpectedly positive results especially when it comes to understanding the concept of Diegesis. It seems as though insights gained from these different areas will blend together well and form a good framework for the rest of the thesis.

The game study is coming along fine, and we have, as of today, analyzed 12 games - and patterns are really starting to emerge when it comes to charting the design space.

Week Summary: 19/1 - 23/1

Meetings have been held with both Anna and Staffan. The monday was spent in Stockholm with Anna, for some general discussion and introduction to the project. During our tutoring meeting two days later, Staffan gave us tips about authors and terms worth checking out, among other things.

Our literature study so far has helped us expand our terminology, and we've found quite a few really interesting articles (see previous posts!) related to the objective of our thesis.

The objective game study has been started; so far we've analyzed The Darkness, Clive Barker's Jericho and Hour of Victory. We can already see that the results of this study will ease the mapping of the different information channels used by games today.

As for the study of other art forms, Erik have ordered "Understanding Comics" by Scott McCloud which will most likely serve as a superb source of inspiration. We are still looking for literature on how information is conveyed in movies.