Publications
Hillman, S., Stach, T., Procyk, J., and Zammitto, V. (2016)
Diary Methods in Games User Research for Inexpensive Data Capture
Workshop on Lightweight Games User Research for Indies and Non-Profit Organizations held at the ACM CHI Conference (2016), 4 pgs.
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Abstract
Diary methods traditionally require little budget in terms of lab space and equipment and therefore can be a highly desirable method for GURs (games user researchers) in small companies. Our results and past HCI research shows there can be great benefit in terms of actionable insights and the collection of rich artifacts to tell the users’ stories. However, the major risk with diary methods is poor execution and lapsing participants. To reduce the potential risk, this paper presents an overview of guidelines for conducting a diary study in games user research, and providing an effective but inexpensive method for the community.
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Hillman, S., Stach, T., Procyk, J., and Zammitto, V. (2016)
Diary Methods in AAA Games User Research
Proceedings of the ACM CHI Conference (2016), ACM Press, 6 pgs.
PDF
Abstract
In this paper we present lessons learned from a diary study completed for Electronic Arts’ AAA video game NHL16 in August 2015. Key findings suggest that while there is high risk to use the method, there is also great benefit in terms of impact via actionable data and ability to collect rich artifacts to tell the users’ stories. To reduce the risk, this work presents a series of suggested guidelines for conducting a diary study in games user research, which has not been investigated in past work. We lay a foundation for diary methods in GUR and how to further improve the method by providing examples electronic diaries and video diaries [e.g. 1,2,5]. However, within the GUR community little work has been done using diary methods [3,7]. Of these, none have provided both a discussion around best practices and a case study example. We fill this gap with our contribution.