Game development today is a complex process that differs from traditional software development by presenting unique challenges stemming from a multidisciplinary structured process, including teams from multiple fields, such as art, sound, programming, design, human factors and more. This, together with the growth of the industry during recent years has increased the need for a more efficient cross-functional collaboration and understanding between these teams. This study focuses on the collaboration and understanding between two distinct teams, User Research (UR) and Development in order to try and shed some light on an emerging challenge of a gap in understanding that exists between the two fields. A case study was conducted at an established game company in Sweden, where a UR team was closely observed and analyzed. The results of this study showed that the issues and practices could be grouped into three different areas, Process, Communication, and Understanding that affected each other differently. Where a majority of the issues found often related to Communication and Understanding problems. The findings provided a glimpse of the gap in understanding in a game development process and what problems it can entail and what the possible solutions could streamline the process. However, in order to fully understand and fill this gap more thorough observations during a longer period of time is required. / Spelutveckling idag är en komplex process, som skiljer sig från traditionell programutveckling genom att den presenterar unika utmaningar som härstammar från en multidisciplinär strukturerad process. Som inkluderar teams från många olika fält, såsom konst, ljud, programmering, design, mänskliga faktorer och många fler. Detta tillsammans med utvidgning av industrin de senaste åren har det skett ett behov av mer effektivt tvärfunktionellt samarbete och förståelse mellan dessa team. Denna studie fokuserar på samarbete och förståelsen mellan två specifika team, User Research (UR) och Development för att försöka belysa den uppkomna utmaningen av en klyfta i förståelsen som existerar mellan de två fälten. En fallstudie gjordes på ett etablerat spelföretag i Sverige, där ett UR team noggrant observerades and analyserades. Resultaten från studien visar att problem och praxis kunde grupperas i tre olika områden, Process, Kommunikation och Förståelse där var och en påverkade varandra olika, där majoriteten av de identifierade problemen ofta relaterade till Kommunikation och Förståelse problem. Upptäckterna gav en skymt av klyftan i förståelse som finns i en spelutvecklingsprocess och vilka problem den kan medföra samt vilka möjliga lösningar som skulle kunna effektivisera denna process. Dock, för att få full förståelse över denna klyfta och hur man kan skulle kunna fylla den så behövs en mer noggrannare studie över en längre tid.

Humans procrastinate and avoid performing activities that they deem dull, repetitive, and out of their comfort zone. Gamification was conceived to reverse the situation by turning those activities into fun and entertaining actions exploiting game-like elements. In practice, however, many challenges arise. Gameful environments cannot satisfy every player's preference and motivational need with a one-fits-all strategy. However, meeting players' motivational affordances can provide intrinsic rewards rather than extrinsic (e.g., points and badges). Producing intrinsic rewards is desirable as they are more likely to foster long-term retention than the extrinsic counterpart. Therefore, gamified systems should be designed to learn and understand players' preferences and motivational drivers to generate specific adaptation strategies for each player. Those adaptation strategies govern the procedural generation of personalized game elements - examples are task difficulty, social-play versus solo-play, or aesthetic tools. However, an appropriate personalization requires intelligent and effective player profiling mechanisms. Player profiles can be retrieved through the analysis of telemetry data, and thus in-game behaviors. In this project, we studied players' individual and social behaviors to understand their personalities and identities within the game. Specifically, we analyzed data from an open-world, persuasive, gamified system: Play&Go. Play&Go implements game-like mechanics to instill more ecological transportation habits among its users. The gamified app offers various ways for players to interact with the game and among one another. Despite Play&Go being one of the few examples of gamification implementing more diverse game mechanics than solely points and leaderboards, it still does not reach the complexity of AAA entertainment games. Thus, it limits the applicability of an in-depth analysis of players' behaviors, constrained by the type of available features. Yet, we argue that gameful systems still provide enough information to allow content adaptation. In this work, we study players' in-game activity from different perspectives to explore gamification's potential. Towards this, we analyzed telemetry data to (1) learn from players' activity, (2) extract their profiles, and (3) understand social dynamics in force within the game. Our results show how players' experience in gamified systems is closer to games than expected, especially in social environments. Hence, telemetry data is a precious source of knowledge also in gamification and can help retain information on players' churn, preferences, and social influence. Finally, we propose a modular theoretical framework for adaptive gamification to generate personalized content designed to learn players' preferences iteratively.

Story-focused news articles are a different type of news articles, containing more visual and interactive elements, developed in order to engage a younger audience for online newspapers. User engagement has been defined as the “emotional, cognitive and behavioral connection between a user and a resource”, and different metrics are used to track the user engagement of the readers on these articles. However, there is no prior research on which of these metrics describe user engagement in the most accurate way. This study therefore aims to find out what metrics to use when measuring user engagement on story-focused articles through interviewing readers of three different story-focused articles and compare their engagement levels with actual metric values tracked. The results show that two out of the three articles can be considered engaging according to the definition, and the metrics they both have in common is high values of scroll depth, low values of bounce rate and high values of page views. The study therefore concludes that a combination of these three metrics describes user engagement in the most accurate way possible. Furthermore, both the engaging articles have a large number of images, galleries and videos compared to the non-engaging article, which indicates that visual elements in different forms are a winning concept for story-focused articles. / Nyhetsartiklar som fokuserar på berättande är en ny typ av nyhetsartiklar som innehåller fler visuella och interaktiva element, utvecklade för att engagera en yngre publik för digitala nyhetssidor. Användarengagemang har tidigare definierats som det “emotionella, kognitiva och beteendemässiga kontakten mellan användaren och resursen”, och olika mätetal används för att mäta användarengagemanget hos läsarna av nyhetsartiklar som fokuserar på berättande. Däremot finns det ingen tidigare forskning på vilka av dessa mätetal som beskriver användarengagemang på bäst sätt. Den här studien har därför som mål att ta reda på vilka mätetal som borde användas vid mätning av användarengagemang för nyhetsartiklar som fokuserar på berättande, genom att intervjua läsare av tre olika artiklar och jämföra deras engagemangsnivå med uppmätta mätetal. Resultaten visar att 2 av de 3 artiklarna kan anses engagerande enligt definitionen, och mätetalen som de båda har gemensamt är ett högt genomsnittligt scrolldjup, låg nivå av studsar och höga siffror för sidvisningar. Studien drar därför slutsatsen att en kombination av dessa tre mätetal beskriver användarengagemang på bästa möjliga sätt. Dessutom har båda de engagerande artiklarna ett stort antal bilder, gallerier och videor jämfört med den icke engagerande artikeln, vilket indikerar att visuella element av olika slag är ett vinnande koncept för historieberättande artiklar.

No description available.

This case study investigated how to evaluate users’ experiences with physical products with a small sample size in a reliable way and how to provide actionable insights for future decisions about design and practice. Through an improving case study performed in collaboration with ASSA ABLOY, a global leader in access solutions, this study specifically focused on interactions with locks. Three major activities were performed and used to investigate how to conduct usability tests with a small sample size and to explore possible measures that can help increase reliability. Altogether 13 participants participated in this case study through two sets of tests and one final workshop. These activities had the purpose to investigate, to suggest and to evaluate how to best capture users’ experiences with locks using Single-Ease Question, Nasa Task Load Index instrument and Product Reaction Cards. The results showed that there are many different measures to apply to increase reliability in test design whilst using a small sample size, for example to mix methods and to counterbalance, both metrics and tasks, to both deepen the understanding of the experiences and to decrease the risks of possible biases. Further results also showed that qualitative and quantitative methods provide different insights about user’s experiences with respect to detailed and general knowledge respectively. It also showed that a combination of the two provides deeper insights than what one method provides alone and that they help validate individual findings.

Das Design eines Produktes gibt immer Hinweise auf seine Funktionalität, was es kann oder nicht kann, was es aushält oder nicht aushält. Die menschliche Wahrnehmung solcher Eigenschaften und Qualitäten kann daher wesentlich dafür sein, wie das Produkt gehandhabt und benutzt wird. Qualität wird durch formale Eigenschaften, Form und Detailgestaltung wahrgenommen. Diese muss mit der tatsächlichen Robustheit eines Produktes übereinstimmen, um den beabsichtigten Gebrauch und Einsatz des Produktes zu provozieren. Ein Missverhältnis zwischen erlebter und tatsächlicher Qualität eines Produkts kann zu Ausfällen, hohen Wartungskosten, geringerer Benutzerzufriedenheit oder geringerem Markenwert führen. In der (interdisziplinären) kollaborativen Produktentwicklung basieren die Anforderungen und die Produktbewertung meist auf quantitativen Maßen. Während die Definition und Bewertung der tatsächlichen Qualität und Robustheit in der Produktentwicklung gut etabliert ist, fehlt noch eine standardisierte Methode zur Definition und Bewertung der erlebten Qualität eines Produkts. In diesem Beitrag wird ein Ansatz vorgestellt, durch den die Übereinstimmung zwischen tatsächlicher und erlebter Qualität durch eine objektive Skala festgelegt bzw. kontrolliert werden kann. Dazu wurde eine semantisch-differentielle Skala entwickelt, die relevante Aspekte der haptischen, visuellen und akustischen Eigenschaften von Produkten erfasst. Es kann sowohl in der Anforderungsdefinition, als auch in den Evaluationsphasen und der Produktentwicklung des Designprozesses eingesetzt werden. Dadurch kann kontrolliert werden, ob die Designziele erreicht wurden oder nicht.

In the future, as world markets become more diverse, designers will be increasingly asked to create products for people dissimilar to themselves. Human issues, such as product pleasure, will also become more important as advances in manufacturing (enabling companies to produce high quality goods more cheaply) will mean companies will look elsewhere to achieve a competitive edge. These changes will affect designers who presently work with little or no user information. This thesis investigates the attributes designers need in resources that offer them an immediate yet broad understanding of users. The research presented in the thesis has a philosophical strand and a design strand. In the design strand, two mock up resources and a prototype resource are developed. These creations are used in the philosophical strand: the mock ups are used to provide focus while collecting opinions from participants and the prototype is evaluated at the end of the research as if it were a real resource. The thesis starts with a literature review; this review reveals that designers need to understand users' physical, psychological and social needs as well as their environments if they are to design appropriate products for them. It explains that designers find much ergonomics information too technical and not visual enough and reveals that no tools or methods exist that offer a broad and instant understanding of users at the start of the design process. Following this, the results from a set of interviews and a focus group are presented. These studies reveal that designers want both personal and general user information that is reliable, video based, contextual and authentic. The results also show that designers want a fast, online resource that allows information to be easily tagged, compared and shared. Next, the thesis describes the development of the prototype resource and its examination using a heuristic inspection. This resource is then evaluated by designers. The evaluation reveals that designers perceived that the resource would be of value to the design process and thought that the videos showing people going about their everyday lives and the virtual tours around people's homes would be particularly useful. The thesis concludes that designers want contextual user information presented as easily navigable video in an Internet based resource. In doing so, it provides an original contribution to knowledge.

Submitted by Silvana Teresinha Dornelles Studzinski (sstudzinski) on 2016-06-13T15:46:08Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Júlia Taiana Schmidt_.pdf: 4158548 bytes, checksum: 4022da634ed70683a0518d6f2de3cfd8 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-13T15:46:08Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Júlia Taiana Schmidt_.pdf: 4158548 bytes, checksum: 4022da634ed70683a0518d6f2de3cfd8 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-04-05 / UNISINOS - Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos / O centro de interesse do design focado no objeto técnico cede espaço e se volta para o humano. Por isso, desenvolver um novo produto passou, portanto, a demandar conhecimento sobre o usuário em diversos aspectos. Aprofundar-se nesses aspectos implica na busca por informações específicas, o que requer pesquisas, análises e, consequentemente, tempo e investimento financeiro. Entretanto, quase sempre, a prática do design é realizada com verba e tempo limitado, fazendo com que a participação do usuário nem sempre seja priorizada. Essa dissertação tem como objetivo geral compreender como o designer busca informações e dados do usuário no desenvolvimento de projeto de produto. Para isso, realizou-se entrevistas individuais semiestruturadas com designers profissionais ganhadores do “4º Prêmio Bornancini de Design 2012” e do “5º Prêmio Bornancini de Design 2014”. A técnica utilizada para a análise dos dados obtidos foi a análise de conteúdo. Percebeu-se que a escolha do método usada pelos designers para compreender o usuário é condicionada por agentes externos, que a tecnologia auxilia e modifica os métodos usados; e que os dados coletados nas pesquisas servem como evidências no processo de negociação. Além disso, parece haver uma falta de clareza sobre a estrutura dos métodos em relação ao processo de projeto, e que as informações coletadas pelos designers costumam ocupar-se de interesses técnicos. Conclui-se, assim, que existem muitas particularidades no processo de busca de informações do usuário não apresentadas na literatura. / Design focus has shifted from the technical object to the human. Therefore, developing a new product demands user knowledge in several aspects. Deepening those aspects implies in searching for specific informations and demands research, analysis and, consequently, time and financial investment. However, the design practice is almost always developed with limited time and money, what implies that user participation is not always a priority. The main purpose of this dissertation is to comprehend how designers search for user information and data in product design. For this, individual interviews were conducted with professional designers awarded in the “4º Prêmio Bornancini de Design 2012” and “5º Prêmio Bornancini de Design 2014”. The data obtained were analyzed using the content analysis technique. It was perceived that the choice of the method used by the designers to understand the user is conditioned by external factors, that technology supports and modifies the methods used; and that the data collected in the researches serve as evidences in the negotiation process. Besides, there seems to be a lack of clarity on the structure of the methods related to the project process, and that the information designers research usually responds to technical interests. In this way, it is concluded that there are many particularities in the user information research process that are not contemplated in the literature.

Abstract Modern urban space, technological infrastructure, and sociability combine into a hybrid space that is the arena for urban pervasive games. Over the past two decades the changes in this game arena have been stealthy although substantial. Technological developments have helped to achieve true mobility of gaming devices, increased precision in localization, improved connectivity, and reduced orchestration required per player. Current pervasive location-based games can be played anytime anywhere. Subsequently, doors have been opened for a growing number of commercial games. These changes demand a new conceptualization of the urban game arena. This thesis focuses on playful appropriations of hybrid space. Hybrid space is urban space that entails ubiquitous technologies. Therefore, playful appropriations of hybrid space are always, to some extent, digital as well as urban. Prior research has identified two metaphors for urban pervasive games —true mobility and true sociability. This thesis proposes an additional metaphor, called synchronicity, for binding together different realities in pervasive games. They can be anything from mirror world like realistic virtual environments, such as 3D virtual representations of a city, to abstract realities, such as the backstory of the game, or the space identity of a certain location. While location awareness is an important binding factor between the virtual and physical worlds in pervasive gameplay, synchronizable elements can be anything from encouraged collocated gameplay to semantic similarities between the combined realities. This thesis is based on five game constructs that have been specifically designed and implemented as pervasive research games. Research data has been collected and analyzed with a mixed methods approach from field trials conducted in the wild. Constructive research is complemented with a literature review that maps the characteristics of current location-based mobile games and the game space. The main contribution of this thesis is the identification of the digital, abstract, and physical layers of reality in digital urban pervasive games. The second contribution is the identification and categorization of the synchronizable elements that bind these realities together. This thesis offers initial insights into translating this knowledge into the design of future pervasive games. / Tiivistelmä Urbaanitila on jatkuvassa muutoksessa, sillä se muotoutuu ja järjestyy uudelleen siellä kulkevien kaupunkilaisten kautta. Ubiikin teknologian, ihmisten kanssakäymisen ja modernin tilakäsityksen yhteisvaikutuksesta syntyy niin sanottu hybriditila, joka muodostaa peliareenan monille pervasiivisille peleille. Viime vuosikymmeninä tällä peliareenalla on tapahtunut vaivihkaisia mutta perustavaa laatua olevia muutoksia. Pelilaitteista on tullut aidosti mobiileja, ja ne kulkevat kaikkialla pelaajien mukana. Pelijärjestely vaatii vähemmän vaivaa pelaajaa kohden, paikannuksen tarkkuus on parantunut ja muutosten kautta myös kaupallisia pelejä on enemmän saatavilla. Nykyisiä pervasiivisia sijaintipohjaisia pelejä voi pelata milloin vain ja missä vain. Edellä mainittu kehitys edellyttää pervasiivisten pelien ja pelitilan uudelleen konseptualisointia. Väitöstyön aihe ei ole pelillisyys sellaisenaan, vaan “pelillisyys ja sen hyödyntäminen hybriditilassa”. Hybriditila on aina urbaani ja sisältää ubiikkia teknologiaa, minkä vuoksi pelit tässä tilassa ovat lähes poikkeuksetta myös digitaalisia. Aiempi tutkimus esittää, että saavutetut kehitysaskeleet voi niputtaa kahden metaforan alle. Nämä metaforat ovat: aito mobiilius sekä aito sosiaalisuus. Tämä väitöskirja esittää kolmannen, vielä määrittelemättömän tai saavuttamattoman metaforan näiden jatkoksi: synkronisuus. Synkronisoitavat piirteet tai elementit sitovat todellisuuksia yhteen pervasiivisessa pelitilassa. Tilassa olevat todellisuudet voivat olla realistisia pelimaailman kaltaisia virtuaalitiloja tai abstrakteja todellisuuksia, kuten pelitarinan muodostama todellisuus tai jonkin tietyn paikan tilaidentiteetti. Vaikka sijaintipohjaisuus on tärkeä todellisuuksia yhdistävä piirre, synkronisoitavat elementit voivat olla muutakin kuin sijaintikoordinaatteja. Pervasiiviset pelit nivoutuvat pelaajiensa päivittäiseen elämään, mikä tekee pelin kontekstista erottamattoman osan peliä. Tämä ominaisuus oikeuttaa ”in the wild” -menetelmien käytön tutkimuksessa, mikä tarkoittaa, että pelaamista ja pelejä tarkkaillaan luonnossa todellisessa ympäristössään. Tässä väitöstyössä käytetään konstruktioina varta vasten tätä tutkimusta ajatellen suunniteltuja ja toteutettuja pervasiivisia tutkimuspelejeä. Konstruktiivista tutkimusta tukee lisäksi teoreettinen tutkimusosio, joka koostuu kirjallisuuskatsaukseen pohjautuvasta nykyisten sijaintipohjaisten pelien ja pelitilan kategorisoinnista. Pervasiiviset pelit nivoutuvat pelaajiensa päivittäiseen elämään, mikä tekee pelin kontekstista erottamattoman osan peliä. Tämä ominaisuus oikeuttaa ”in the wild” -menetelmien käytön tutkimuksessa, mikä tarkoittaa, että pelaamista ja pelejä tarkkaillaan luonnossa todellisessa ympäristössään. Tässä väitöstyössä käytetään konstruktioina varta vasten tätä tutkimusta ajatellen suunniteltuja ja toteutettuja pervasiivisia tutkimuspelejeä. Konstruktiivista tutkimusta tukee lisäksi teoreettinen tutkimusosio, joka koostuu kirjallisuuskatsaukseen pohjautuvasta nykyisten sijaintipohjaisten pelien ja pelitilan kategorisoinnista.

In a world dominated by digital technologies, user-centered design aims to ensure that the users are catered with solutions that deal with their needs. As agile methods have become a prevalent approach in software development, it is crucial for the two disciplines to work together. However, existing studies have already presented incompatibilities between the methods of the two disciplines. This study intends to investigate the impact that agile principles have on the adoption of user-centered approach on a broader scale through the many parties involved in the process. By conducting interviews with practitioners and interpreting the results through the lens of Engeström’s activity system model, the findings of the study reveal significant influences imposed on the user-centered approach by external and organizational factors that are intensified by the agile principles. Three main areas of concern are identified and accompanied by broad suggestions on how to approach resolving them, focusing on the empowerment of UX designers, accurate deliberation of the intentions and practices of user-centered approach, and close collaboration to raise awareness of the benefits of user-centered approach. Lastly, it is emphasized that the identified areas of concern – primarily the problematic impact from clients and executives – need further extensive research to provide definitive solutions.