user-research

User Interviews for Indie Developers: 5 People Reveal the Real Problem The best way to avoid "built it, no one uses it" is user interviews. 5 people is enough to see patterns. Here's the method I use. Why Interviews, Not Surveys Surveys (wrong): "Is this useful? → Yes/No" teaches you nothing Interviews (right): observing behavior reveals the real problem Users can't accurately say what they want.…

In my guest post for the leading research community, I explain why and how to advance a new research team beyond just running usability testing including: - How to make it clear user research isn't just another opinion - How to calculate and prove the financial value of running user research studies - How to find and develop research advocates across a company The post Calculate the ROI of user r…

Earlier this year I spoke at the Product Coalition 'P24' event, and introduced how and why product managers, and their teams should get started with user research. The brief chat covered topics such as: - How user research informs product decisions - What are the benefits of running research in house - What are the challenges new user research teams face - How to justify investment in user resear…

A collation of blog posts on Reach's official blog about introducing user research to a company who are new to using research to inform development and design decisions. The post Blog Posts from Reach appeared first on Steve Bromley - User Research .

(Updated Jan 2019) As you may know, nine months ago I left PlayStation to lead the User Research Team at Parliament. Although it’s been sad to leave the world of gaming, and many awesome colleagues, it’s been nice to be able to talk more openly about the work our research team is doing, especially through […] The post Blog Posts from Parliament appeared first on Steve Bromley - User Research .

To improve the GUR-SIG mentoring scheme, one of my goals is to produce examples of the work that user researchers do. Students on the scheme have asked about wanting to see a games user research report, however because real reports are often under NDA, mentors can find sharing real reports a challenge. To help address […] The post What’s in a games user research report? appeared first on Steve Br…

Being a good user researcher is not just about finding usability or user experience issues with games. Once the issues have been found, another part of the role is ensuring that the development team take the right action to resolve them. To achieve this, it’s important to create a strong trust relationship with the development […] The post Building Trust with Development Teams appeared first on S…

1-1 playtesting sessions, where the moderator is sat in the room with an individual player (or small groups playing on one console), are a key part of games user research, and are essential for getting useful usability feedback throughout the development process. During my time at PlayStation I’ve been lucky enough to work with some […] The post Some things I’ve learned about moderating playtesti…

As games user researchers, we consider usability to be a major factor in the quality of games. However it is not the only aspect that makes games “good”. A game could have fantastic usability, and yet still be boring. In order to get a snapshot of the importance of usability for game quality, I have […] The post How important is games usability to reviewers? appeared first on Steve Bromley - User…

A common question for user researchers is how many participants are required to find ‘true’ results. Clients can say “but that was only one user” as a reason to disregard a finding. A key part of our role is to explain that one user can be very significant, for example in a 5 user study, […] The post Opinions in User Research appeared first on Steve Bromley - User Research .

I should say upfront that this article will contain no spoilers, in case you haven’t finished The Last Of Us yet! I’ve written before about the importance of trophy and achievement design and the effect it can have upon the player’s experience. I recently played The Last of Us, and noticed that they made some […] The post Trophy Design in The Last of Us appeared first on Steve Bromley - User Rese…

I’ve never been very good at coding. However I’ve found that the bits I do know have helped me become a better user researcher. In this post I explain how this knowledge has helped me, and why I recommend that all user researchers should learn how to code. Understanding and empathy User researchers work on […] The post Why user researchers should learn to code appeared first on Steve Bromley - Us…

Tiny Tower is the hit iPhone game which allows players to build and manage a towerblock and its residents (or ‘bitizens’!). Despite being free, Tiny Tower is continually in the top-grossing apps list due to it’s effective use of free-to-play mechanics. I spoke to Ian Marsh, one half of Nimblebit, who have had numerous iPhone […] The post Ian Marsh, creator of Tiny Tower, on user research, play-te…

The reflective practitioner, as described by Schon in his 1983 book, is the idea of continually reflecting on your work and the process during the design or production of a system. By continually reviewing, and improving the manner in which you work, and the deliverables, the process can be continually refined and improved, leading to […] The post The Reflective Practitioner in User Centred Desig…

‘Free pizza and coke! Just play our game for an hour’. Sounds like a good deal right? And pretty easy to organise, just pulling kids of the street. It can even be done in the pub, for mobile devices. Even this ‘free pizza’ recruitment is better than testing your game (or website, or application) with […] The post Test with real users – not your team appeared first on Steve Bromley - User Research…