Situated Research's Blog

This list of ten features should be embraced by game designers

Steve Krug argues in his book Don’t Make Me Think! that a good program or product should let users accomplish their intended tasks as easily and directly as possible. The less time it takes a person to complete a desired task (even if only by a few seconds), the more satisfying it becomes. When that happens, people are more likely to use a product in greater frequency and return for more. So in the spirit of improved usability, here are ten standard features every videogame designer should embrace. Read more »

Illustration: Olly Moss

On the last day, they gathered for a group photo. They were videogame programmers, artists, level builders, artificial-intelligence experts. Their team was — finally — giving up, declaring defeat, and disbanding. So they headed down to the lobby of their building in Garland, Texas, to smile for the camera. They arranged themselves on top of their logo: a 10-foot-wide nuclear-radiation sign, inlaid in the marble floor. Read more »

ScienceDaily (Nov. 11, 2009) — Although often seen as an inconsequential feature of digital technologies, one’s self-representation, or avatar, in a virtual environment can affect the user’s thoughts, according to research by a University of Texas at Austin communication professor. Read more »

Matthew Sharritt, President of Situated Research, recently created a brochure giving an overview of our video game user-experience research:

Situated Research: Video Game User-Experience Analysis (PDF)

Please feel free to download, view, print, and redistribute this brochure to others! We have a unique talent to help game developers create better games, and we need your help getting the message out there so people know about us. Read more »

Greetings! Today we’re happy to offer a guest post by Ross Smith, Director of Test, Windows Security, at Microsoft, and one of the authors of The Practical Guide to Defect Prevention (Microsoft Press, 2007). Read more »

Project Natal brings natural user interfaces the office

Mundie: The Desktop Of The Future Is A Room
Microsoft’s Craig Mundie demonstrates natural user interface technologies (photo credit: Robert Sorbo/Microsoft) Read more »

Serious games occupy the training-based category of game development products. Serious games are utilitarian and goal-oriented, offering the user protocol-driven functional engagement, acknowledgment of task achievements, and almost zero entertainment value or fluff (outside of the necessary local and peripheral “traffic” caused by natural interaction with other life and environmental elements – human, animal, plant, mechanical, and weather). Serious games subject matter is typically taught to employees-in-training, re-assigned employees, or emergency preparedness / non-profit volunteers within any line of work, from leadership to trench-level roles. That learned material is, then, put to use in real world employment or deployment scenarios, from how to properly drain and dispose of vegetable oil from a fish-and-chips fryer to how to properly disassemble, diagnose, and repair the turbines on a military helicopter. Read more »