05.27Usability Usability Usability - by Dan Goodman
Some of you may have read my recent Gamasutra article, Game Tools Tune-Up: Optimize Your Pipeline Through Usability but I wanted to discuss something that writing that article has really brought to the forefront of my mind. As an industry, we aren’t very reflective on the methodologies we use regarding the development of tools. This blog as well as other sources may be bringing about a change in that regard, but it is progressing very slowly. There are techniques in use in other industries that have significantly increased the usability of software, and many have been around for many years.
While at GDC this year, the idea of usability came up at the Tools Round Table. Now, I’m pretty sure John had included the topic at the round table, in part because he had gotten a very early preview (and several revisions) of my article before it went up on Gamasutra. I appreciated the effort on his part, but I was a little surprised at the total lack of response from the group. When asked who was using what techniques for usability, the room was completely silent. I expected that if anyone in the industry was doing anything at all with usability, surely this was the group.
Although it was a bit disheartening, it illuminated a real issue in game development that most of us have known in our hearts for quite a while. Very few people are serious about making game development tools accessible to their users. Artists, designers and even programmers spend a great deal of time dealing with tool issues for the length of every new project. The tools developers wonder why they have so much trouble, without ever realizing that there are techniques in existence that could answer that very question and could help them make better tools that got fewer complaints and more work done.
I recommend every tool developer out there take a look at these resources:
The Usability Professionals’ Association website
Jeff Sauro’s Measuring Usability website
Also, read Alan Cooper’s excellent books on usability:
and
The Inmates Are Running the Asylum
I wish that I had time to worry about the very important topic of usability. I think that refinements at that level are more often than not back-burnered to the features necessary to have functional tools. I know that I have to carve out my own time to make usability improvements as they are less important than toolset features and we just never seem to have enough time.
May 28th, 2009 at 7:01 am
Firstly, just wanted to say this is a great blog (only just discovered it)! It seems really hard to get people to really think about usability. Occasionally I’ll send around a usability link or two to our internal mailing list, but I don’t think people really pay close attention. It would be great if we could get time allocated for proper usability testing but I don’t see that happening; I think the programmers really need to be pro-active about it. Unfortunately, that’s really hard to make happen too (I keep seeing these weirdly designed forms that don’t match any other bit of software an artist or LD might use)!
Personally I like the “principle of least astonishment” design philosophy coupled with sensible form layout that mimics other software out there. People often forget that even though we’re designing tools only for internal use, we still have clients who will be using our software whose daily productivity depends on the software being stable and easy to use!
May 28th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
I enjoyed the feature article and am adding this blog to my RSS feed.
I (and others) have talked about game usability (and there is a new Games User Research SIG as part of IGDA) and I think it would be really cool to do a joint presentation on Game Usability — from both a game player and from a tool user perspective.
Why?
You can only iterate on features and content as quickly as your tools allow. More usable tools mean increased velocity of iteration. More iteration means more chances to do user-testing with gamers and incorporate that feedback back into your game.
Nothing is more frustrating to coders, content creators, producers, and usability experts than being unable to get a new build, a fixed feature, or some new content in response to user-testing feedback because it’s “too hard”, “too costly”, or “takes too long”. Better tools mean you can respond to user experience problems rapdily and both test and fix deeper into the game.
May 29th, 2009 at 10:42 am