Evaluating Older Adults’ Perceptions of Usability and UX of a Games User Research Platform

Topic Description

A growing group of older adults engages with digital games as leisure, which makes them an interesting target audience for developers. To ensure that games meet their preferences and needs, this likewise necessitates the involvement of older adults in games user research (GUR). Here, games are evaluated in playtests that aim to assess player experience before a game is brought to market. The work on this thesis will be carried out in collaboration with PlaytestCloud, a platform for playtesting and game user research to help game studios make games that players love. 

The goal of this thesis is to evaluate a commercial GUR app from the perspective of older users (aged 60+), focusing on usability and user experience (UX) of the journey through the system. In particular, the thesis focuses on usability issues and breakdowns in UX, and the thesis should explore older adults’ perspectives on remote participation in games user research. Overall, this research contributes to the accessibility of digital products in general and digital games in particular for older persons.

This is the right thesis topic for you if you are interested in accessibility, human-computer interaction and games, and if you would enjoy liaising with our external partner PlaytestCloud and study participants.

Task Summary

1. Related Work: Understand usability and user experience for older adults, as well as GUR.
2. Design and Run Study: Design and carry out a user study with older adults (N=20, you are involved in recruitment), focusing on usability and user experience of the GUR platform.
3. Analysis and Recommendations: Analyse data and formulate concrete recommendations for platform design based on the results.

Skills

Required: HCI, Usability and UX, Communication, Organization

Beneficial: User Studies

Contact

Friedrich Schadow