Worldwide Mobile User Research Manager, Déborah Amar’s aim is to decipher player behavior with a view to improving their gaming experience.
Déborah Amar is WW Mobile User Research Manager at Ubisoft. What’s her role and that of her team? Observing and analysing the behavior of players on mobile games and thinking of ways to make their experience richer and more user-friendly. From contributing cognitive sciences to redesigning tutorials, she tells Stories about a day in her life.
HOW CAN USER RESEARCH BE DEFINED?
DÉBORAH AMAR It’s a set of methodologies where the aim is to understand the needs, behaviors and motivations of users in relation to a product. The goal is then to work this knowledge into the design to improve the player experience, and this takes place across the entire development phase, and continues even after game release. Different techniques are used, including interviews, direct observation, focus groups and surveys. All of this, while aiming to draw on the methodology that elicits the least bias possible. A whole science of test procedures in design exists as well as the questions to ask, and how to reformulate them, in order to get the most valid, useful responses possible. We’ve really adopted an iterative approach to our work: it’s best to start testing as early on as possible, with less content, and test several times, rather than test once at the end of the project. Ideally, User Research should be considered as a tool to aid design rather than a validation tool.
ONE OF THE IMPORTANT ASPECTS OF YOUR WORK, AMONGST OTHERS, IS THE TESTING. CAN YOU EXPLAIN HOW THIS IS DONE, AND WHAT YOU ANALYZE?
D.A. We carry out different tests at Ubi Mobile, depending on the questions we’re asking about the project in question. The issues we face can be summed up into four main themes. The first is “Use and Understand” or “Usability”, in other words, if the player understands and manages to use the game, its rules, interface and controls. To this end, we do the tests with very few users, in a controlled environment, in the laboratory. We ask the player to carry out specific tasks in the game and we focus on observing their behavior. Then, “Enjoy”. When Usability is satisfactory, we ask whether the players like the game, or not. We let them play freely, uninterrupted, so as not to affect their natural sentiment. And when the test is complete, we ask the player questions. To do this, we include around thirty testers to provide us with data that starts to have statistical validity. Next, “Engage”: the aim is to identify what makes the players want to continue, or stop playing a certain game. This is even more important on mobile as we're on a free-to-play model with no barriers to entry, where players can decide to quit quickly. We use Diary-Studies, logbooks in the form of daily questionnaires, which players fill in while playing from home. And finally, “Retain and Monetize”: we gravitate towards all the questions about player loyalty in the long term. As even if we’ve tested their commitment in the first few days of the game, the real challenge is keeping them for several months, or even several years. The testing of loyalty and monetization is difficult to set up before the localized release phase, which is called the soft launch, as it takes a very large number of players and a game in a near-final state. During the pre-live and live phases, we work with two different types of data: observation data about in-game behavior (called “tracking”) and feedback data from players (via in-game questionnaires). The two complement each other and the one doesn’t have much meaning without the other.
WHAT HAS YOUR BIGGEST CHALLENGE BEEN AT UBISOFT TO DATE? AND YOUR MOST MEMORABLE EXPERIENCE?
D.A. I believe that the greatest challenge lies in adapting our processes to live games, which have been released and continue to evolve. This encourages us to really change our habits and become more creative in order to gather data. This is all the more important as this data is rich and can really feed our thinking about the games set for future release. It’s always rewarding to see how a change implemented partly through our work has a tangible impact on the key performance indicators of a particular game. More to discover on https://stories.ubisoft.com/article/decrypter-le-joueur-mobile/
More to read on https://stories.ubisoft.com/article/decrypter-le-joueur-mobile/ (French)
CRÉDITS Rédacteur : Vincent Manilève - Graphiste : Elie Sitbon Stratégie digitale : Maud Espié