10 - An Introduction to User-Centered Design Techniques (for Games)

by Lennart Nacke

Suze Ingram, a User Experience con­sul­tant from Australia, has suc­cinct and inter­est­ing pre­sen­ta­tion slides about User-Centered Design (UCD) Techniques. UCD focuses on the needs (dare I say also the moti­va­tions and emo­tions) of peo­ple who use appli­ca­tions and prod­ucts. This usu­ally informs the vision and direc­tion of the design and devel­op­ment of a prod­uct. The tech­niques she talks about are in detail:

  • Contextual enquiries
  • Diary stud­ies
  • User Workshops
  • Card Sorting
  • Personas & Scenarios
  • Wireframing
  • Paper Prototyping
  • User Testing

All of these tech­niques can also be very help­ful and quite pos­si­bly nec­es­sary to design an out­stand­ing game. On a com­pletely dif­fer­ent note, I have also talked about an approach to game design focused on play­ers and their needs, emo­tions, and capa­bil­i­ties, which is explained in my bonus pre­sen­ta­tion below. Hope you enjoy these two user-centered design pre­sen­ta­tions together.

Readers Who Liked This Post Also Read