The goal of this project was to assess the usability of an in-development cognitive training game titled “Engage.” I worked with two other graduate students on a semester long project for a Human Factors Seminar while also collaborating with the game’s development team. Due to “Engage” being a rather complex mobile game and its target audience being teenagers our team decided to focus on redesigning the tutorial. The current system in place was overwhelming and non-interactive creating a barrier for new players and player decreasing retention (see example below). This was especially important to note as the developers goal was to have their audience play the game for at least 30 minutes every day. Thus our objectives were to increase player motivation in initiating gameplay on a daily basis as well as provide clear instructions on the game’s mechanics. This process took part in three phases.
Phase 1
In this initial phase our team assessed Engage’s tutorial for critical usability issues that may have influenced player motivation, retention and comprehension
- Methods included a task analysis, heuristic evaluation, and universal design analysis for the tutorial. Additionally, a user definition and accompanying user personas were developed to aid in tutorial redesign.
Phase 2
The second phase involved using the information gathered from Phase 1 to provide design recommendations for improving the tutorial to the development team. We also created a prototype tutorial based on these recommendations
Phase 3
The final phase of the project was concerned with testing the effectiveness of our tutorial.
- Experiment: 8 subjects (4 = no tutorial, 4 = tutorial). We analyzed whether participants in the tutorial group would be more likely to play “Engage” again, if they liked the game, and their overall comprehension on the games mechanics compared to the old tutorial. We measured these variables using think aloud protocols, the System Usability Survey, card sorting, and semi-structured interviews.