Evaluating User Experience in Games: Concepts and Methods - Lirmm

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166 M. Lankes et al. TV (Bernhaupt et al. 2008b) and several others (e.g. Law et al. 2007). Most of them did not take into consideration recent developments in the area of gaming, such as game play between thousands of players, multiplayer audio channels and the use of novel input devices to encourage physical activity (Bernhaupt et al. 2008a). Digital games constitute a tremendously varied set of applications, with a wide range of associated player experiences, defying a one-size-fits-all approach to their conceptualization and measurement. One of the main challenges facing the gaming research community is a lack of a coherent and fine-grained set of methods and tools that enable the measurement of entertainment experiences in a sensitive, reliable, and valid manner. Taking a factor-structure approach to characterize user experiences, terms like fun, flow, and playability are most often used to explain user experience in game design. However, there is an open discussion to include other factors which might have relevance for games. Emotion is often cited as a key element of user experience (e.g., Hassenzahl and Tractinsky 2006). On the other hand, the quality of the display of emotions portrayed by embodied conversational agents (ECAs) is perceived as a necessity to improve the user experience (Lee and Marsella 2006). The following chapter is looking in detail on the relation of user experience and emotions that are expressed by ECAs. It shall provide some insights concerning the relation between emotions displayed in a game (through the characters) in conjunction with emotion-eliciting situations in regard to the user experience. Results of this study are a first step in a series of experiments investigating the relationship between user experience and interaction with embodied conversational agents. The chapter is organized as follows: Based on an overview on currently used models in emotion theory, the usage of emotional (factor) models in games is explained and how the modeling of nonplayer characters (NPCs) – a field of application of ECAs – is representing these emotional (factor) models. It shall be investigated how the display of emotions (still, animated, or interactive) in various contexts (either with a consonant or with a dissonant context description) is affecting the user experience (measured with a questionnaire). The section on the experimental study describes in detail three prestudies for selecting stimuli and material followed by the main study on the relation of displaying emotion in games via ECAs and perceived user experience. The conclusion shows how the findings can be used in game development in terms of designing positive user experiences. 10.2 Related Work Incorporating emotional expressions for nonplayer characters in games is seen as an appropriate way to improve the gamers’ experiences. The research area of emotions is a central topic in human–computer interaction and is approached from various perspectives. Subsequently, some of these perspectives, and their relation to current developments in user experience research, are presented. First, we look at how emotions can be integrated, seen either as part of the computing system or as part of the overall user experience. Second, we look on how emotions can be measured,
10 Evaluating User Experience Factors Using Experiments 167 and third, we present some related work on how emotions are integrated into ECAs and how we measure the user experiencing in regard to the emotional expressions performed by ECAs in conjunction with emotion-eliciting situations. 10.2.1 General Description on Emotion The implementation of emotional factors in systems received an increased interest by the human–computer interaction (HCI) community as researchers within this field aim to develop machines that are focused on human needs (Branco 2003). Emotions play a crucial role in our everyday life with computers (Crane et al. 2007) and have a significant impact on user experience as they influence actions, expectations, and future evaluations (Picard 1997). Technological advancements enable machines to perceive, interpret, express, and respond to emotional information. Traditionally, emotional factors were neglected as designers focused on usability aspects and developed systems with the aim to increase efficiency of required tasks (Picard et al. 2002). Although it might be argued that machines should be treated as mere tools that do not (or should not) require any emotions, results of Reeves and Nass (2003) showed that people tend to exhibit social and emotional behaviors toward machines. Picard et al. (2002) also note that interaction with machines is emotional even if the system was not designed to incorporate emotional aspects. Users should be enabled to utilize familiar communication mechanisms when interacting with computational systems. The human–machine interaction process should be designed to resemble human interpersonal interactions, in order to rely on skills obtained from human–human communication. Systems get easier to use if the interaction between human–machine is similar to human–human interaction (Bernhaupt et al. 2007a). When dealing with the various objectives within HCI research in the field of emotion, we can choose from a tremendous amount of research approaches. Mahlke (2005) provides a taxonomy dividing emotion in HCI into affective computing and emotional design. The concept of affective computing postulates to develop systems that are able to perceive the emotional state of the user, interpret the affective state, adapt to the user’s state, and generate an expressed emotion (Minge 2005). Emotional design claims that emotion is considered as an important factor of the user’s experience with interactive systems and it is aimed to incorporate emotional aspects in the interactive system design process (Norman 2002). From the perspective of User Experience (UX) research, emotions are investigated to understand their role as antecedent, as a consequence and a mediator of technology use (Hassenzahl and Tractinsky 2006). Researchers in the field of user experience evaluation thus try to concentrate on integrating emotional processes of the user experience into the evaluation procedure of the interactive systems. Our experiment addresses the factor emotion concerning user experience by raising the questions how emotional stimuli (facial expressions by ECAs and emotion-eliciting situations) in interactive system affect the (more general) user experience?
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Human-Computer Interaction Series E
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Regina Bernhaupt Editor Evaluating
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For Philippe
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viii Foreword Chapter 3, Presence I
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x Foreword personality which evolve
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Contents Part I Introduction to Eva
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Contributors Regina Bernhaupt IRIT,
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Contributors xvii Manfred Tscheligi
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xx About the Authors Emily Brown is
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xxii About the Authors a post-docto
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xxiv About the Authors Christina Ko
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xxvi About the Authors MIT Media La
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xxviii About the Authors Theft Auto
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Chapter 1 User Experience Evaluatio
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1 User Experience Evaluation in Ent
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1 User Experience Evaluation in Ent
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Chapter 2 Enabling Social Play: A F
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2 Enabling Social Play 13 It is als
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2 Enabling Social Play 15 observati
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2 Enabling Social Play 17 for playe
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2 Enabling Social Play 19 to provid
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2 Enabling Social Play 21 Colwell J
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Chapter 3 Presence, Involvement, an
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3 Presence, Involvement, and Flow i
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82 E. Brown from the code. This is
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84 E. Brown At this point, there is
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86 E. Brown Game developers have be
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Chapter 6 Investigating Experiences
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6 Investigating Experiences and Att
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Chapter 13 Using Heuristics to Eval
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Index A Advanced interaction games,
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