INTRODUCTION

Jesse Schell (2008) says “The game is not the experience. The game enables the experience, but it is not the experience”. User Experience (UX) design in the game is what decides how interactive and addictive the game is. It is the process of amplifying user satisfaction with a product by enhancing the usability, accessibility, and functionality.

 

It is common in the Indian gaming industry that UX designer and UI designers are the same. And, UX designer is one of the least known roles in the game production among the start-up gaming companies.

 

The overlook of the UX design leads to the overlook of the User Experience itself. It is essential for the game to have a good and understandable UI, which can make the user experience enjoyable.

 

UX design is one of the overlooked roles in Indian game industry. UX design goes beyond visual design to capture and craft the artistic creation, which inspires the user and makes them more into the game. It is important to have UX design for the more effective outcome. Mostly start-up companies because of limited resources overlook UX design process.

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RESEARCH QUESTION

1. What is the importance of going through the game making process?

2. Why is UX designer on the game team incredibly valuable?

3. How UX designing processes affect the game output?

4. What is the difference between UI designer and UX designer?

5. Why don't companies in India hire UX designer?

6. why information architecture, content strategy, and navigation is a need in the UX designing?

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STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM –

Involvement of the UX designing in game making process is essential to get a good outcome. If this procedure is not done effectively it can affect the result of the game. UX designer plays an important role in the team. In Indian startup game companies, this process is not considered as important and companies do not have a specific job role for the UX designing, therefore, the user experience is being compromised.

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RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The following methodology is approached to achieve the dissertation: a study on the importance of the UX designing in Indian startup gaming industry. To find more about the importance of the UX designer, Two start-up companies were approached. The purpose behind approaching the companies was to find out the why UX designers and UX designing processes are being ignored in the game making process. To find out more about the UI and UX designing games like Witcher III, Tomb Raider, GT 5 were referred.

After researching the UX designing process the outcome will be very helpful to the uprising company in India about the involvement on the UX designing process and the effect it takes on the outcome of the game. To find the gravity about the importance of the UX design, a case study has been performed, after which the idea about the good UX design will be cleared. After that research on the important step in the processes of UX design has been performed.

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LITERATURE REVIEW -

In the dissertation, we will refer to the work of the author which has contributed in this field. Our current research is on the involvement of UX designing in games.  In UX design you look at user’s cognitive reasoning and process capacity. Since the user is involved, it is important to give them a good experience. So, the research on UX design will be important. The below books will be referred to study on this subject.

The Practitioner’s Guide to User Experience Design

By Luck Miller [1]

This is the guide to the most common issues encountered by UX designers - and how to solve them. It allows designers to avoid the unwanted steps along the way, which leads to better product and make it marketable.

Practical UX Design [2]

By Scott Faranello

This book denotes a foundational yet practical approach to UX that delivers more creative and mature design solutions. This book improves our UX design awareness and skills. It also helps to gain greater confidence to know when you are delivered a quality work of UX design.

UX for Dummies[3]

By Donald Chesnut, Kevin P. Nichols

UX is a rapidly growing field that marries web design, user research, and data analysis. This book helps to understand how user utilized their website to better meet their customer’s need and so pursue their own business goals.

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IMPORTANCE OF UX DESIGNER

User Experience (UX) designer plays a very important role in the team. His focus is on the user. UX designer brings the content of the project together that will engage with the customer. UX designer basically works on the detail of the project. With their knowledge, experience, and discipline they can coordinate the core area of the project. The ability of UX designer is to collaborate with the business, technical, marketing and creative team which helps to build a stronger design and better user experience.

 

The UX designer uses the defined function and content which is required for the game UI to evolve a set of wireframe designs and flowchart which describes how the users will interact with game UI. The UX designer works closely with information architect in developing an overall strategic plan for building the game and with the game manager to keep the project on target.

 

When the user plays a certain game, they are introduced to a “user experience”. a well-placed UI, well-functioning navigation system, and meaningful content which is strategically placed make the user involved in the game. It is user experience designer who must provide seamless navigation, ease of use, proper placements of the content.

 

The user experience designer must understand users and potential user of the game, creating prototypes and then conducting user testing.  This also covers ensuring that the design is compatible with all another platform.

 

While User experience designers do a lot in the area of how the user will interact in the game and designing that flow of interaction, but they do not focus on marketing or sales of the game. They do, however, work with the marketing department. And once that design is complete, there is often face to face tester to assess how user behavior and interaction with the presentation.

 

The most effective process that UX designer use is brand attributes, creating a user profile, prioritize, review user needs, create user stories. UX designer hears everyone’s views on the UI design, keeping everyone’s views in mind. he creates a for the project for example – where the button in the UI design will place what sort of option should be there in the main menu, what sort of layout the inventory will follow, where in the game the HUD will give more impact.

 

The Witcher III game Ux design is the best example to justify the importance of UX. Because of the proper UX Design process experience of the user make more interesting and entertaining for example in this game to create or craft something there is a different window which shows what sort of things are needed and what thing we have, which makes easy to know what part we need to collect.

 

EFFECT ON THE GAME OUTPUT BY UX DESIGNER PROCESS

The UX designer must undergo certain level: meeting, wireframes, usability testing, and launch. By doing so, a lot of changes come under UX design process. The look and the placement of all the materials in the single screen required proper placement. It always affects the outcome, if the content on the screen is not well placed then the user might face difficulty using it. if this process is not done, UI will be there but it will not be perfect as UX designer consider every aspect of the UI design and go under the research and views of teams, it automatically affects the outcome of the game, where every button and their placement has meaning and interact very smoothly by the user.

 

The game has to balance functionality and usability with the visual appeal for an enjoyable and entertaining user experience. All successful games which around have some common traits -a simple, stylish and functional interface are based on the UX design". so, it can’t have and functional interface and UX design that is more focused on getting the user completely engage into gameplay.

 

The game which is usable is quickly rejected by the gamers. Since games are played for fun and entertainment, gamers have no reason to adjust poor user experiences design. A game with the poor usability is often criticised for being too hard or too easy to play. The content should be easy enough for even new users to get used to manipulating the character and progressing to the next or new levels without a sharp learning curve and even hard enough to challenge the user skills and abilities.

 

In the game industry's lots of the games offer users the element of control. The visual aspect of the gaming surrounds a wide range of possibilities. For example, the way cars turn turtle in auto racing games, the game design offers effective infinite opportunities for user involvement through visual appeal.

 

People love the idea of trying something better and new, even if the game basic gameplay remains the same. The user is likely to be put off by a competition that introduces too many entire adjustments in its design as well as a game with an ultra- conservative user experience design. The design of the game has to get balance by introducing new elements without going overboard with innovation. Going through the UX design change the outcome of the game.

 

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN AND USER INTERFACE DESIGN

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User Interface is the content designed into the information device like a button, an icon that user uses to interact with the device, User Experience is the internal experience that a user has as they interact with every element of the game. The user interfaces evolved with the introduction of command line interface, which first appeared on the blank display screen with a line for user input.

UI designer is working on the game, sites, application, wearables. They are answerable for designing the layout of the game’s interface and user interface element in the entire game.

 

The user experience is the process of making the experience of the user better and up to their satisfaction by improving usability, easy to use and pleasure provided in the interaction between the user and the game.

 

UX isn't bounded to the visual interface of the game. It’s the concept that has many dimensions and encompasses the entire experience a user takes including -

1. The process they go through to find your game.

2. The is the order of actions they take as they associate with the interface.

3. The thoughts and feelings that arise as they try to accomplish their task.

 

Don Norman and Jakob Nielsen explained it perfectly when they said

“It’s important to distinguish the total user experience from the user interface(UI), even though the UI is obviously an extremely important part of the design.

 

As an example, consider a website with movie reviews. Even if the UI for finding a film is perfect, the UX will be poor for a user who wants information about a small independent release if the underlying database only contains movies from the major studios.”

 

UX is concentrated on the user’s trek to solve a problem, UI is focused on how a product’s surfaces look and function. If the UI is the table, chair, plate, glass, and utensils, food then UX is everything from the taste of food to the way it is served and presented.

 

The most common mistake that people will hear in the workplace, in meeting and often in job listing or job requirement is the unplanned combination or interchange of the term of the job. The user interface is active towards the actual element that interacts with the user. UI refers to the collection of an element that allows the user to interact with a system.

 

Problems such as unarranged UI design in the game, fail in presenting the content in proper manner brings us to the user experience(UX). UX is then just the end result of the user interface. User experience is the goal. It is not just the goal of an interface, but of a game or interaction with an organization. When good user experience is accomplished, every positive point which the content of the game wants to pitch works in a systematic way. User experience is focused on the success of the whole game. User experience contains a much bigger picture than user interface does but it still relies on the smallest detail to drive it. To understand it properly refer figure 1.

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Involvement of user experience designer in Indian game industry

User experience designer is one of the most required in the game making process. User experience is very helpful for the success of the game. But still, the start-up companies in India don't bother hiring user experience designer for their game which sometimes leads the game to the failure.

 

The main reason for not hiring a user experience designer for start-up companies is a lack of finance, unawareness - it is the rare but possible reason that some people don't know about the concept of user experience. And the last and the most common is having a designer for both user experience and user interface. UX design and UI design are both different things. UX designer must go through usability testing, research, persona and is the person who gives the whole plan of creating a user interface.

 

The company which just started see no need of having UX designer because of lack of resource. Some of the companies make game designer do the user experience work. Which put the burden of the designing part on the single person. Because of unawareness or limited resources, companies do not hire user experience designer in the game project.  

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Importance of Information architecture, content strategy, and navigation in UX designing.

INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE

Information architecture is defined as “the art and science of organizing and labeling games to support usability.” UX is the way a user feels about using a game.  Even with the count to its meaning, User Experience takes Information Architecture as its footing and brings it to the further level.

 

Information architecture(IA) is the relatively aged term. It focuses on the organization and structure of the content in a way a user can navigate through it. The work Information architecture is to create a usable content structure out of a complex set of information. They do this using plenty of user-centred design method: usability test, and creation, and user flow diagram. That said, “it still seems that UX design is in vogue”

 

Looking at any one discipline’s workflow is an alarming task, but let’s take a fast view how the workflows for IA’s and UX designer might differ. IA would consider their needs, research their users’ goals, and run some form of analysis. User experience will take the information architecture progress into consideration, they might also consider the emotional goals of their end-user. Their competitive comparison may be more with interaction models, rather than structure and layout.

 

User Experience builds on the foundations that information architecture provides, aiming to take that experience to the next level, both creatively and emotionally. The outstanding difference that defines how the game of today are designed as opposed to those of yesterday. This is how the Information architecture plays an important role in UX designing process.

CONTENT STRATEGY

Without a Content strategy, content is just group of words. Content strategy gives the structure to what to publish or what is the content necessary for the panel. it also implies a framework for a content program that maps out the user. Content without strategy is just a container with no order.

 

As Jerry cao (UX Content Strategist, UXPin) said “Content strategy is the origin of the experience. The user wants content, they don’t care about design, so you must always start with the content and build around it”. This implies that content what we are giving in the game plays a very important role in gameplay build up. Core strategy defines how your content of the game will help you meet business objectives.

 

Technically content strategy is not really a part of the user experience strategy. While work and governance have a direct impact on the end content of the game, they can’t live exclusively within the domain of UX. workflow, structure, and governance inform one another, which is where the content strategist can make a difference.

 

There are few different ways to relate the content strategy to user experience design. From a services perspective, a good description of the relationship is IBM’s “Customer Facing Solutions” infographic, published to demonstrate the consultancies UX strategy approach. Refer the below image-Figure 2-UX strategy approch[4].

 

Figure 2-UX strategy approach

 

 

The user doesn't come to your game to appreciate its design or fancy interactions. These may catch their attention once they get there, but it is necessary to provide them proper information that brings them to your games.

 

As the content is so crucial to the user experience, it is not necessary for a conversation about content not to happen across an entire game project team - including user when appropriate. If there is no content, what are your designing? Without content, how can a decision be made about the necessary functionality and technology to support it?

   

Freelance consultant Sophie Dennis[5] says, “If you’re focused on making wireframes and designs or building interactive prototypes, what you create can all too easily end up being basically a bunch of gray boxes saying, ‘some content goes here.’” The risks of this approach are great and plentiful.

Creating good content is hard enough when it is your primary role on a team or within an organization. We can fill the gap between the two discipline of content strategy and user experience design. Content discussions and better design process are possible without delivering all the final content. If the content of the game is good, then user experience and user interface will make sense.

NAVIGATION

 

Navigation is meant the system that takes users where they want to go. Navigation should be simple which can help the user to find the particular information which they require from the user interface of the game. It is the map and direction of the UI and is usually what gets users deeper into the game experience.

 

Navigation is the relevant part of the user experience and user interface. It is most commonly thought of as a button at the top of the HUD with some function to it, but they take many other forms all over the game. While creating navigation for the user interface we should keep in mind to keep it simple.

 

If the navigation of the user interface is difficult it can affect the user experience which will ultimately affect the outcome of the game. While user experiences to process, it is the important step for the better user experience. if the navigation of the game is well established then the user experience design will work more perfectly and experience of the user will be good.

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case study – tomb raider

introduction

Tomb Raider is an adventure-action game created by Crystal Dynamics and published by Square ENIX. This game is the third-person perspective game. Player take control of the series lead character Lara Croft. The player can transverse between the camps and the island using footpaths. This game contains an online multiplayer mode, which allows the player to compete in several maps. The game story is originated on yamatai, a fictional lost island the dragon’s triangle of the cost Japan. The user plays the main character Lara, who is a young archaeology graduate who came to research on the civilization which is lost and which no one believes it.

ui/ux design for tomb raider

[6]The UX design of Tomb Raider conveys the style of the rebooted series: simple and modern. This game includes designing and implementing camp upgrade screen. like if the user wants to do some change or upgrade their skills or upgrade their weapon they must go to the camp and then upgrade their things, which is very easy to the player which is playing the game. HUD elements, maps and progress tracking screens, front end menus are plotted in the same way.

Tomb raider’s user interface features full 3D menus, camera transitions, and interactive prompts. The game contains properly designed concepts, icons, typography, layout, user interface, user experience, etc.

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main menu/ opening screen/ maps

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The good UX design is involved even in the start screen. When the game first starts, this startup screen appears. By the background, the player gets the idea some historical elements are involved.

 

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This is the main menu screen which is perfectly formed. All the elements are perfectly placed. The menu contains all the options that are needed or which is very important. It also gives the information on what time the player started playing and in the game how many days has been over.

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Options contain controls, display, and audio. it is a very important option for any game. The user can also go on other option on the main menu from this scene itself.

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If we want to see the map its should look like the player is looking that maps. In this game, maps are well represented. Here in this screen, we get all the information like how much area we have covered, how many base camps are there. Our location and the destination or how many skills point or currency we have.

status menu

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The status screen contains almost everything a status menu is needed. Skills progress, the percentage of the game completion, out of all skills how much is skills we got, etc.

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[7]The inventory shows all the upgraded weapons, upgrades the weapons needs or a newly available weapon. In this game to upgrade player’s weapons, they must collect the spare parts which are also displayed in this screen only. The experience of the user becomes very easy because it provides all the details in one place.

 

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[8]In this game, if the player wants to upgrade their skills or inventory, they must go to the base camp and upgrade, a safe place where no one will attack the character which is a very reliable for the user to find every information in one place.

As this game is based on archeology all the option and all the items of the option, main menu, etc. are well placed. If the new user started playing the game from the middle user can easily understand the user interface. In all ways of the user experience concept, this game contains all aspect which is behind the success of the game.

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case study- Gran turismo 5

introduction

[9]GT 5 (Gran Turismo) is the fifth game in the Gran Turismo racing video game series. It is the proper car racing game. It has many features such as it is the first game in the franchise to include both mechanical and external damage modeling, it also includes real-time deformation engine that will process model deformation according to speed and angle of impact.

main menu

With all the good features in the game, The UX design is not done properly. The menu of the game very complicated. The user will get confused where to start the race or buy the car or their parts. The typography of the menu is not mixing up.

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HUD

When the race is going on the HUD of the game is really crowded which makes the game very difficult to play. For better experience screen should contain only important information.

status menu

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In this screen, it shows the premium cars, standard car, and online option. The design of the screen is very old and even the car showcasing is bad.

 

 

 

CONCLUSION

 

The first step to a successful game is to have a proper user experience design which can make a good impact on the user. After all, it's all about the user’s experience. Presenting the content in a proper manner always give positive feedback. The proper UX designing process is a process which gives the UI a proper pathway of presenting the content.

From hiring the right person for the job to simply understanding what is required to approach the problem, proper knowledge of UI and UX terminology is a simple way to facilitate better communication, better problem solving, better design and better user experience. Understanding why to hire user experience designer instead of making the game designer or user interface designer do their work.

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reference

1.MILLER, LUKE. PRACTITIONER's GUIDE TO USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN. 1st ed. [S.l.]: PIATKUS BOOKS, 2015. Print.

2.Faranello, Scott Faranello. Practical UX Design. 1st ed. Birmingham: Packt Publishing, 2016. Print.

3.Donald Chesnut. Kevin Nichols. UX For Dummies. 1st ed. John Wiley& Sons Ltd., 2014. Print.

4.Resmini, Andrea, and Luca Rosati. Pervasive Information Architecture. 1st ed. Burlington, MA: Morgan Kaufmann, 2011. Print.

5.Content, C. (2017). Creating Good User Experiences by Focusing on Content :: UXmatters. [online] Uxmatters.com. Available at: http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2015/11/creating-good-user-experiences-by-f

 

[1] MILLER, LUKE. PRACTITIONER's GUIDE TO USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN. 1st ed. [S.l.]: PIATKUS BOOKS, 2015. Print.

[2] Faranello, Scott Faranello. Practical UX Design. 1st ed. Birmingham: Packt Publishing, 2016. Print.

[3] Donald Chesnut. Kevin Nichols. UX For Dummies. 1st ed. John Wiley& Sons Ltd., 2014. Print.

[4] Govella, A. and Govella, A. (2017). UX Strategy – Defining Strategy: Current States, and Future States. [online] Austin Govella. Available at: https://www.agux.co/blog/defining-ux-strategy [Accessed 24 Jun. 2017].

[5] Content, C. (2017). Creating Good User Experiences by Focusing on Content :: UXmatters. [online] Uxmatters.com. Available at: http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2015/11/creating-good-user-experiences-by-focusing-on-content.php [Accessed 23 Jun. 2017].

[6] En.wikipedia.org. (2017). Tomb Raider. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_Raider [Accessed 24 Jun. 2017].

[7] Figure 10-inventory screen.

[8] Figure 11-base camp.

[9] En.wikipedia.org. (2017). Gran Turismo 5. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gran_Turismo_5 [Accessed 24 Jun. 2017].