Main Research Question: What do digital content creators need to efficiently discover and edit music into their content, without requiring knowledge of music theory or composition?

Methods:

• 1. Observations
• 2. Interviews
• 3. Surveys

I was part of an exploratory study about how content creators discover and add music and other auditory material to their work. The project resulted in recommendations towards designing an intelligent digital media editing software. This is the final report containing details about each stage of the process and our implications for design.

I was part of a 4-person group where the workload for obtaining data was split equally. I did a significant part of the qualitative and quanitative analysis.

Main Research Question: How and why was the game design of Ghostbusters (2016) received poorly by critics and players?

Attempting to answer this overall question involved doing an extensive project that required four distinct stages.

Methods:

• 1. Competitive review
• 2. Heuristic evaluation
• 3. Usability test
• 4. Playtest

Every UX research method had its own evaluation round, in which subsequent research questions/objectives were built from the previous round's findings. The presentation link has summary slides of each stage, and the full report link (submitted for the course) contains more details for design recommendations and research artifacts such as test plans, moderator guide, consent form, protocols, and surveys. I used DePaul's Software Observation and Usability Lab (SOUL) to conduct the tests.

Question asked by game designer:

• Do players find the game fun?

I helped Steve Bromley create a Playtest Kit that contains a sample playtest plan for games user researchers to follow. We've selected the story-driven game Oxenfree to demonstrate an example.

Research Questions:

• Can players understand the main game mechanic of "tethering" (i.e. attaching oneself to another body)?
• Can players understand consequences of failure in the game?
• Can players understand the objectives despite the intentional aesthetic ambiguity of the game?
• Can players navigate the game user interface?
• Can players navigate the game map?

Method: Usability test

This game was an early build of a senior undergrad Game Development capstone project. At the time, the game dev students wanted help mainly with usability issues, as the game was intentionally made dark to support its ghost-like narrative. I again used DePaul's SOUL lab.

Research Questions:

• Do players perceive the game's aesthetics the way the developers intended (i.e. a feeling of "Spider-man in space")?
• Can players understand the function and controls of the grappling mechanic?
• Can players understand the game's objectives?
• Can players navigate the game world?

Methods:

• 1. Heuristic evaluation
• 2. Hybrid usability test and playtest

This game was another early build of a senior undergrad Game Development capstone project. The game dev students were in the later stages of their process and were interested in primarily assessing the player experience (enjoyment and aesthetics) of their game, but also identifying usability issues that they may have missed. I again used DePaul's SOUL lab to do this study.