Testing and Validation

Testing was conducted on users that fit the target audience, which was university students, that enjoy playing video games. Two types of testing were conducted to measure the success of UI implementations.

• User Testing One: Simply Button Design
• User Testing Two: Navigational Testing

User Testing One: Simple Button Design

This user testing was used to determine the colours, size and general look of the buttons, and how users feel when looking at them. The user testing method that was deemed appropriate for the goal of this test was Contextual inquiry. This means that this user test was run as a general real-time interview. Four users were tested using the simple interview method. Below are the starting questions I used.

Questions That Were Asked:

• What are the first 3 things that catch your eye?
• Do you feel that any of the buttons stand out?
• Do you think they are all intuitive?
• If you could change one thing what would it be? These were the main questions that the conversation was built from.

Alterations from Testing:

From the interviews there were three changes that had to be made:

• The Cogs button needed adjustment as Users did not find it intuitive. The blue/green colour it was, made users question what it was for, also the illustration was said to be "not really a cog, but more of a symbol of some sort".
• The next change was not to do a coin bar, but rather a number of coins collected, this was a general consensus from all users as they found "you can have more than 100% in coins".
• The last thing that needed to be changed was the music and sound buttons, when the music button is clicked it has a small amount of animation where it goes a duller shade, but it also looks like it is instantly turned off, for consistency reasons, the music button needs to be the same. This is mainly because they will be right next to each other on the page.

User Testing Two: Navigational Testing

When the buttons were fully linked and the goals of the sprint were completed. This is essential to ensure that the navigation of the screen and the ensure that it is intuitive to find all pages. (First Click Testing)

Purpose:

Navigational testing is highly valuable to assess how potential users navigate through the game when assigned a particular end goal. Team 10 have created three tasks that are considered fundamental to sprint 1 with the implementation of buttons that link to other pages and enable changes in functionality. The results that come out of these tests help narrow down primary user flows and improve the game’s information structure.

Tests:

1. Starting at the Start Page, can you navigate to the shop pop-up?
2. Can you identify where the status of the crystal’s health would be displayed?
3. Can you find two different ways to access the settings page?

Results:

User 1:

• Observations: User two moved swiftly through each test. Since there are only three main pages, these being, the start, main game and settings page, this meant that the user quickly absorbed the location of various factors across the entire game quickly. When starting on the first test, the user began the test on the start page where they clearly identified the 'start' button which gave them access to the main game page. Here, the association between shopping and the use of shopping bags made it apparent the shopping bag icon led the user to the store. From this task, the user said overall the task was easy, however, there was a little bit of hesitancy experienced after the button was pressed. Since the button did not change colours, show shadowing or have any change in form, the user did not know if their click converted and the action of clicking the button was successful. The second test came naturally to the user when starting again from the start page, as the user recalled the location of the status bars when doing test 1. Once clicked the start button the user was again taken to the main game page, where the left-hand side of the game screen displayed the status bars. Due to the differentiation between the heart status bar and crystal status bar, the user easily distinguished between the two and completed the task. Lastly, the user had to find two ways to navigate to the settings page, this was easily achieved as once again the limited number of pages meant the user absorbed the contents of the game. Hence, they found the route to the settings via the start page and the main game page.
• Conclusion: The user testing demonstrated that the user could effectively navigate throughout the entire game and recognised common symbols of application functionalities. The primary takeaway from person 1 was their feedback about pressing the button and not feeling confident that the button was responsive due to the absence of the button changing form which is commonly employed in most applications to express interactivity. The UI team hope to incorporate this change in future sprints.

User 2:

• Observations: The first task was completed quickly and the user efficiently made their way from the start page and to the main game page's shop button, by simply clicking two buttons to get there. In terms of overall time taken to complete the test, the first test took the longest as this occasion was the first time the user has exposed to the game and was taking their time exploring the visuals displayed. Similar to user one, the time spent completing the first task enabled user two to complete test two even quicker as they had picked up on seeing the status bars when navigating to the shop button. Lastly, user two completed test three and easily found the settings button on the main game page as they recalled it was next to a button they used in an earlier task. However, user two spent longer trying to identify the second settings page button as they didn't spend too much time on the front start page that they did not notice the settings button in the right-hand side corner. The user said they took longer to identify the second route to the settings page as the majority of the buttons on the start page are centrally aligned and bright colours like yellow and red, which made the settings button sit more in the background. However, the user said it was not necessarily poor design as it was a secondary avenue to the settings page which meant that it wasn't crucial if that button couldn't be identified as easily since the other button is more obvious and connected to the gameplay.
• Conclusion: The navigational testing results were highly positive for user two as well. There were no obstacles and struggles identifying any information; with the user commenting that it was 'very intuitive'. Although the user demonstrated slight difficulty when finding the second route to the settings page, there were no negative emotions experienced like frustration. Ultimately, this test confirmed that the placement of UI features was somewhat familiar and easy for the user to work with.

User 3:

• Observations: User three had no issues finding any of the pages, they followed the path of the file correctly in every instance. For the first question, their first click was on the start page which brought them to the shop page. This also allowed them to easily find the settings page as they just clicked the setting on main and clicked back to go to the main menu again. The third test was very simple as well as they clicked start and found the statics in the right corner.
• Conclusion: From this test, it was very clear that there was a mood change finding that the buttons didn't work. Obviously, satisfaction is created from pressing a button and the screen changing.