Background Design User Testing
Designs for the game backgrounds were created by team 2 in sprint 2. The design would also be implemented during sprint 2. To ensure the designs were aligned with what users required in the game a user testing session of the draft animations designs was held.
To test the draft design of the background a user testing session was held. This session had the goal of collecting user response information to the draft design and evaluate what about the draft design can be improved for the final copy.
Due to the type of user information and feedback we wanted we decided to conduct user questionaries and then interviews. The user testing session went as follows:
- Allow the user to view Design for as long as they’d want.
- Give them a questionnaire and leave them alone to fill it out
- Gather all user questionnaire and analyse for trends in data.
- Interview a user with questions related to the trends found in the questionnaire data.
After all users int the testing session (5) had completed looking at the animations they were presented the below questionnaire (see appendix section) to be completed in private.
Once the questionnaire was completed be all participating, they were collected and randomly shuffled as to keep test user confidentiality.
Analyses of the questionnaire was then taken place and key areas of improvement were highlighted. And formed the basis of the interview questions which were then created.
One user was then selected to perform a quick interview with (as only one user was able to be interviewed due to user time constraints).
From the questionnaire results it was found that the average mark across all questions was 7.12 with the majority of questions being 6 or above. However, there was one question that stood out. This was question 3 which had an average mark of 3.8. This far below the average and cause for concern from the design of the background and indicated to the team that this question I should be the focus of the interviews.
Once interviews were completed it was discovered that the users found that the current draft background was too small of an image and was visibly pixelated. This gave it the appearance of it being uncompleted which explained the low user scores for question 3.
With this information the main goal of the final copy will be creating the image again but with better imagery. As the other aspects for the background such as its immersion and its art style scored well in the user tests they will not be as much of a priority in the final copy.
Interviewer: thank you for participating in the user test session. What were your initial thoughts on the background?
Interviewee: So I liked the concept but it I think it needs work.
Interviewer: Ok thank you for letting us know. The purpose of this session to get the most feedback we can so we can put the work in to make the final product as good as possible. Could you explain what about the backgrounds needed work?
Interviewee: So first off it seems very small. The art style really matched the space theme of the other objects, but I think the background could be a larger image.
Interviewer: Thanks. Was there anything else?
Interviewee: It seemed pixelated. Like it was low resolution.
Interviewer: How about the moulding of the background into the game. Was it of similar quality?
Interviewee: I think the background as lower quality then the rest of the game. Bu the art style, the colours and all that did match the rest it was just not finished I don’t think