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• Introduction
• Target audience analysis
• Justification for existence
• User Testing Design <--You're Here
• Low fidelity sketches
• User Testing “Typhon”
• Animation
• Appendix
  • User Interviews Final Boss
  • Testing Sessions Sketches & Design Concepts
  • Final Boss Typhon Sketches
  • User Testing High Fidelity Design

User testing - Design Direction

The challenging part about justifying the presence of an antagonist was the visualization. In order to evaluate "what might the final boss look like?" hypothesis and set aside personal beliefs and prejudices we conducted user tests with our target audience. Based on the qualitative analysis we were able to clearly identify user expectations in relation to the overall look and feel of the final boss.

User testing - target audience During the user testing session, all users were selected based on the values derived from the target audience analysis. We picked respondents either based on the favorite game (simplistic gaming style), or people who consider themselves inexperienced gamers. In addition, a handful of participants were picked based on pixelated 8-bit design aspect of the game - "Retro Enthusiasts". Reflecting on the above, user testing insights helped to develop a concept that became engaging and interesting for both user groups, despite traditional user demographics such as age, gender, location.

User testing session details Appendix Testing Sessions - Sketches & Design Concepts(https://github.com/UQdeco2800/2022-studio-1/wiki/testing-sessions-sketches-and-design-concepts): During the introduction, we showed the current game, explained the concept covering hybrid and ancient environments. In addition, we asked participants to design their own villain within a 2-minute time frame. Furthermore, we asked to provide feedback on the form of attack (sword, archer, sorcery) and place of attack (land, water, both) that the antagonist may have. Objectives were:

• Get users to write at least 5 descriptive words, phrases, associations with their drawings. This task would help us choose a design direction for the main concept.
• Give participants 2 minutes to explain their inspiration or idea behind their vision. In addition, we asked for details about enemy movement and form of an attack. In other words, information from this task helped us to understand whether the villain should only attempt to destroy the towers, or focus on crystal, or perhaps both at the same time trying to defeat a hero.

User testing session summary: Some data derived from the user tests showed that participants prefer a final boss to have a trident because it is associated with Greek mythology. In addition, users tend to mix different species. It is because they perceived it as an abomination, a source of evil and tried to depict that “scary feeling” through their drawings. However, the main problem with the summary of all initial user tests was that different users provided different insights.

For example, some participants didn't cover topics related to form of an attack or the movement, while others exceeded expectations by providing several data points including various attack methods (melee, distant, sorcery) as well as movement style (levitating, flying, walking) Appendix Testing Sessions - Sketches & Design Concepts(https://github.com/UQdeco2800/2022-studio-1/wiki/testing-sessions-sketches-and-design-concepts). In an attempt to generalize data, see similarities and identify patterns we referred to quantitative analysis.

User testing session quantitative analysis: In order to accurately filter the data derived from the initial user testing session we attempted to categorize information by topics. In addition, depending on participants’ feedback, we assigned data points so that we would be able to convert findings into graphs for a better visualization.

For instance, some users suggested several ways that the enemy could move, thus 2 points were assigned to that individual. However, if a person didn't provide much insights or failed to give feedback covering enemy movement, we would then assign zero data points. Finally, this approach allowed us to choose the most efficient design direction. Refer to Low-fidelity-sketches page for analysis.