Vixen: a games user research tool for collection and interactive visualization of usertesting data

Abstract

Visualization techniques can facilitate the understanding and exploration of relationships in usertesting data. For example, data from players' in-game movement can be combined with interview data or questionnaire results. However, the process of amalgamation is not straightforward, because the underlying data often exists in different formats. Another challenge is making these visualizations simple enough to provide a quick overview for producers, but also detailed enough to be usable and practical for gameplay programmers. Hence, there is a need for an interactive visualization tool that can adjust data representation based on the nature and detail level of data required from different members of a development team. This thesis reports development efforts on a tool that assists data collection and provides a dynamic and interactive representation of usertesting data. The thesis reports two studies to evaluate the effectiveness of the tool with game developers.