Biometrics In Games User Research-Pejman
#notesFromPaper Year : Tags : user experience playtesting biometrics Authors: Pejman Long Foley Mcallister
Traditional user research methods include:
observation, such as larger scale analysis of the various paths users took, what objects they interacted with, etc. Observation could also occur on a smaller scale, such as identifying facial cues and body language, however this is intensive to conduct and usually requires video footage.
think aloud, which is useful in getting player thoughts “in the moment”, though there is some evidence indicating that it can be disruptive to the play session
heuristics evaluation, a way to understand the accessibility of the game without any code being written
Interviews and Questionnaires are convenient, but only reflect a finished experience and is prone to bias such as post rationalization
something called RITE which combines observation and think aloud
Some biometrics tools that have been used:
- Facial Electromyography as a measure of positive and negative emotional valence.
- Cardiac Interbeat Intervals
- Electroenephalography
- Heart Rate
- Galvanic Skin Response
- Not very intrusive, just some pads that go on the fingertips, though these can get in the way of certain game controllers.
- Eye Tracking
There is a correlation between subjective experiences and these biometric trackers and these trackers can be used to create emotional profiles.
This paper included a case study of Galvanic Skin Response where players played Modern Warfare 2 and Haze. Certain game events such as frustration with another player’s actions were accurately captured by the biometric devices.
They used a categorization of game enjoyment elements by Desurvire and found that observation was able to catch some of the higher level elements, but only biometrics were able to capture lower level elements and issues with gameplay that are important in designing games.
Thoughts on biometrics:
One unfortunate thing about this paper is that it didn’t go into as much depth as I assumed it would on the limitations of biometrics, though they are mostly obvious: The cost of biometrics is high, users have to come to your lab in person, and the time taken to set up the user studies / analyze the data is high. All in all, it’s unclear whether the added complexity of biometrics is worth the deeper game understanding. Nonetheless, I could see biometrics being a powerful tool for larger companies with the budget or for research labs looking to understand very specific aspects of the user experience.
Mirza-Babaei, Pejman, et al. “Understanding the Contribution of Biometrics to Games User Research.” DiGRA conference. 2011.
