Case Study

The Tests the Thing: Making Sure Your Product is Fun and Playable

User testing with kids. Photo by Digital.Gov

Be sure to get your design in front of kids early and often.

If someone were to ask me the key to making sure a game was great for kids, my immediate answer would be to make sure you spend time with kids playing your game during its development.

This is true no matter the age of your audience, but with young kids it’s especially critical. There are considerations to be aware of in how they will interpret things – from icons to placement of buttons to scripting – that are different from how an adult might see or hear the same information. If your intended audience is kids, and you don’t make time to get kid’s feedback during the development process, you risk releasing a product that is a frustrating experience.

While there are companies that can help to lead a formal usability testing, there are ways to do it yourself for smaller and indie firms.

A couple of basic points here:

1) Test as early and as often as is possible. If you can only allow for one session, work it into a place in the development cycle that allows you to adjust your game based on feedback.

2) Remember that kids are forgiving about graphics – you don’t need to wait for final polished design before you get them testing.

The following is a how-to guide on testing your game for both fun and usability, and is based around testing games appropriate for 3- to 6-year-olds. Your session will vary based on the type and size of game, as well as target audience.

Start by answering these questions:

 

What are you testing? What is your goal?

What is it you need user feedback on? The game mechanic? The characters? Leveling? UI? Engagement? Fun? Time it takes to complete a game or level?

I’ve looked to user testing for guidance in all of these areas. You might have a really solid game mechanic that teaches a concept well, but if it’s flat or boring, no one is going to play, at least not many times. You might have a really fun, sticky game, but if the elements of the user interface are in the way or confusing, the player might not actually ever discover the game itself. Maybe you want to know if a character is intuitive to play with or you are trying to define its characteristics. Maybe you want to playtest to get feedback on a number of things, and likely you’ll uncover things with your testers that you hadn’t anticipated. All are acceptable, just be sure to have clear goals to help structure your time with your testers.

 

What is your target age?

It’s ok to have a target age range, but what’s the sweet spot? There is a huge difference between what a 3-year-old and a 6-year-old can do. Identifying the key age will not only answer a number of usability questions (for example, can you use text, or is your audience pre-literate?) but will also help you determine what you find acceptable for older or younger kids in your testing. I recently tested a game aimed primarily at 4-year-olds, but we were just as eager to test with 3- and 5-year-olds to make sure it was appropriately challenging for the wider age range.

 

Who do you have access to?

I’ve tested on my own kids (constantly), my friend’s kids, my co-workers kids, and the local elementary school’s kids (all with parental consent, of course). The more kids I can get on any game, the better.

If you don’t have access to kids, this is another reason to consider a company who can help with the protocol of the testing and with the recruiting efforts. Test with as many kids as possible to get good results – a single tester might lead you to think something is a problem when they actually just don’t like it (hey, we can’t make everyone happy!).

Once you’ve answered these questions, you are ready to get your plan together. You know whom you are testing with and what you are looking for, so what does the test actually look like?

Keep things simple.

For 3- to 6-year-olds, I’ve held sessions that were 5-10 minutes (you’ll learn more than you expect to in that first 10 minutes) and up to a half hour, but typically no longer. While many a young gamer can sit with a game until forced to stop playing, young children should not be expected to play for too long.

The best-case scenario is that the session time is up and the child asks to keep playing – this is the first sign that you’ve got them engaged (congrats!). Even with older children who might have the attention span to play longer, you will likely have witnessed what you need to within a half hour session.

Make it comfortable.

Regardless of the age of your kid testers, get down on their level. Sit next to them or across from them, rather than hovering over them. Make them feel at ease. Make their experience with you as fun and comfortable as possible.

Document the process.

Depending on how many kids you are working with and how specific your goals, you might want to have a pre-made worksheet to use with each tester. Whether using a worksheet or taking notes, make sure you ask good questions. You want to keep straight what you want to take away from the testing and so making sure you have those questions outlined ahead of time will keep you from getting distracted by what is happening in the test.

Focus on why the user made a particular decision. Ask questions you know are wrong to see what their response is (a good way to see how well they understand). Also remember that the older the child, the more articulate their responses can be.

Here are some specific things you might look for during your session, depending on the age of the child and what you are looking to find. You can use these to prepare your worksheet in advance so you can quickly jot down relevant notes.

  • Positive Reactions
  • Negative Reactions
  • Gets stuck or needs help?
  • Closes game or app?
  • How does the user try to move objects? (Swipe, tap, click)
  • Touches screen with which hand?
  • Obscures screen with hand?
  • Touches screen with more than one finger?
  • Time spent (on level, puzzle, etc)
  • Gets bored?

You might also have a few specific questions to ask after you’ve done some observation, in hopes of gaining insight into what the user comprehended from the play time:

  • What did you get to do in this game?
  • What did you learn in this game?
  • What did you like about the game?
  • Was the game fun? Why?
  • How much did you like this game?
    For this question, present the user with a visual scale of sad, neutral and happy faces. You might add language to supplement the faces, like “really liked it,” “kind of liked it,” “didn’t like it at all.”
    And follow up with, “Why did you pick that?”

Get started.

Give the user a short overview of what the game is and get playing. Be there to offer assistance if needed to help the user along, but plan to be in observation mode.

In some cases, parents may be sitting with the child while they play. I typically approach parental involvement as voluntary. If they are there and happen to help out, it can be just as valuable to see how an adult needs to help a child during a session, to give you advice on what kind of scaffolding you might consider building into the game. It’s also valuable to learn if a parent can intuitively jump in to help the child or not. Ideally your game is ready to pick up and play by the child, and easy for a parent or adult to jump in and offer help at a glance if needed.

Take it back to the team.

Now that you have all this feedback, what do you do with it? Your results should be the start of a conversation with your team to find the best solution to problems that were identified in the session.

Test again.

If you’re able to, implement the relevant feedback from your initial testing, and test again. Depending on what you are testing, you may want to find a new group of testers for your next round – testing with the same group too many times can become ineffective as they’ve become somewhat familiar with the product or remember how they played in previous sessions. If you are testing a game’s leveling, it may be useful to observe with the same group for comparison, but in general it’s a good idea to iteratively test with different groups.

It’s worth noting that the above overview blends playtesting and usability testing together. It’s not unusual that you have to look at both together due to time and resources. If you have the ability to test a few times, you can definitely test early to assess the game mechanic and fun, and look specifically at usability later on.

And after all of this, you’ve hopefully gained some invaluable insight into ways to improve your game, and picked up some pretty funny anecdotes as well.

Seriously, the kids will be inevitably hilarious and surprising, providing invaluable insight – like the five-year-old girl who looked at me earnestly, and said gently, “Did you think about making this fun?”

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Anna Jordan-Douglass

Anna Jordan-Douglass Anna Jordan-Douglass is Vice President, Digital Development & Interactive Media at The Jim Henson Company. There she oversees all strategy and production of online and mobile products for a variety of brands, with a focus on kids and education. She works closely with the production, marketing and outreach teams, as well as curriculum advisors and developers, to deliver projects that meet a variety of goals while providing fun, educational experiences for kids and families.