Veronica Zammitto

It’s that time of the year again!

I’ll be delivering a full-day tutorial on games user experience,  usability at the Game Developers Conference 2012

Here is the description:

Speaker/s: Veronica Zammitto (Electronic Arts) and Paul Newton (Electronic Arts Canada)
Day / Time / Location: Monday 10:00- 6:00 Room 3024, West Hall, 3rd Fl
Track / Duration / Format / Audience Level: Game Design / Full-Day / Tutorial / All

Description:

This full-day workshop will focus on one of the most critical components of game production: the applied practice of game usability research. Using widely-established stages of game development, attendees will be exposed to hands-on exercises, group discussion, and practical analysis of user experience methods which are intrinsic to effective game design. After building a foundation of usability discipline, attendees will be taken from pre-production through post-production and presented with a wide variety of potential usability techniques such as think-aloud, heuristics, cognitive walkthroughs, direct observation, questionnaires and metrics.

In order to understand and create the ultimate user experience we must collect relevant data. This requires defining clear usability study goals and selecting the appropriate techniques through the different stages of development. During the workshop, we will discuss the pros and cons of different testing techniques and demonstrate how they fit best in relevant usability scenarios, continuously emphasizing how all these factors play a role in shaping a successful user study design. Working in groups, participants will embody many roles in the usability process. Through concrete exercises, attendees will explore in-depth responsibilities and tasks conducted by game user researchers, facilitators and observers.

Intended Audience: The knowledge gained in this workshop will empower attendees to carry-out their own usability studies and add appreciable value to the game design process. With this understanding, designers and game user researchers alike will be able to acquire actionable user experience data through rigorous procedures to ensure better informed decisions during the game development process.
Eligible Passes:  All Access Pass, Summits & Tutorials Pass

Permanent link to the description: http://schedule.gdconf.com/session/6712/Usability_Boot_Camp

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 14th, 2012 at 1:33 pm and is filed under Conferences - Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.