By now, Nintendo has made exactly 87,493,029 versions of Mario Kart since the game was first introduced in 1992 for the Super Nintendo. (Okay, the company has really made 13—which is still a lot!) But a new sequel coming this fall to the Nintendo Switch changes the formula in an enticing way, thanks to super experimental UX.
There is a reason you are not familiar with many -maybe not even one- of Airbnb’s competitors. The renting/booking marketplace “giant” has thrived in the global market for a decade and still hasn’t found anyone that can stand up to him.
We’re all familiar with the way companies such as Uber and Airbnb have brought fundamental disruption to their respective industries. Taxis and cars for hire existed long before the advent of Uber. But one of the core differences Uber offers customers is the user experience (UX).
Developers both large and small can benefit from an outside perspective given by a game user research, or usability research geared towards games. Indie developers can benefit from adding UX expertise to the development team, while large developers can obtain an outside perspective to compliment and verify findings from internal members of the development team. In this article, we will present three key ways in which game research can maximize a game’s success.
Most clients and projects require the design researchers to state a predetermined sample size of users. Researchers often find it hard to justify to clients and business stakeholders on the choice of their sample size of users.
User-centered design isn’t just about creating a great experience for customers—it’s also a smart business move.
The Most Important Rule in Product Design, and Possibly Life Management
There is one principle of organization that every human should adhere to, particularly people who design products. Day after day, I see companies break this rule, and it is 100% of the time to their detriment.
Psychology plays a big part in a user’s experience with an application. By understanding how our designs are perceived, we can make adjustments so that the apps we create are more effective in achieving the goals of the user.
To help you understand the perception of the user, I will introduce some design principles which I think are the most important, and also provide common examples of these principles in practice.
Card Sorting is a method used to help design or evaluate the Information Architecture (IA) of a system. In a card sorting session, participants organize topics into categories that make sense to them and they may also help you label these groups. To conduct a card sort, you can use actual cards, pieces of paper, or one of several online card-sorting software tools.
Brainstorming is one of the oldest known methods for generating group creativity. A group of people come together and focus on a problem or proposal. There are two phases of the activity. The first phase generates ideas, the second phase evaluates them.