Practical, appropriate, empirically-validated guidelines for designing educational games

There has recently been a great deal of interest in the potential of computer games to function as innovative educational tools. However, there is very little evidence of games fulfilling that potential. Indeed, the process of merging the disparate goals of education and games design appears problematic, and there are currently no practical guidelines for how to do so in a coherent manner. In this paper, we describe the successful, empirically validated teaching methods developed by behavioural psychologists and point out how they are uniquely suited to take advantage of the benefits that games offer to education. We conclude by proposing some practical steps for designing educational games, based on the techniques of Applied Behaviour Analysis. It is intended that this paper can both focus educational games designers on the features of games that are genuinely useful for education, and also introduce a successful form of teaching that this audience may not yet be familiar with

Remote UX Research in Unpredictable Times: Takeaways from Early Pandemic Practices

Copyright © 2023–2024, User Experience Professionals Association and the authors The recent global pandemic had shocking impacts on societies and economies worldwide by bringing complexity, ambiguity, and uncertainty for extended periods. UX researchers, faced with numerous challenges, were compelled to adapt to emergent conditions through remote research methods. Investigating how some members of the UX research community adapted to the emergency offers valuable insights into how they responded to uncertainty and showed resilience. Therefore, we studied the early practices of UX managers and researchers in Turkey during the first 6 months of the global pandemic under lockdown conditions. Our goal was to understand how UX research and design teams responded to uncertainty by customizing their methods. We focused on seven firms as different cases to conduct semi-structured interviews with seven managers and 13 UX researchers. The results demonstrate that the adaptable nature of UX research allowed them to quickly respond to these emerging conditions. In the early period of the pandemic, our study participants—UX managers, designers, and researchers—experienced the advantages and challenges of remote UX research necessitated by the lockdown. These included issues related to participant recruitment, work performance, readiness, and methodological concerns. Based on our findings, we make recommendations for UX researchers to conduct moderated and unmoderated remote research while maintaining inclusiveness and rigor.TÜBİTAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey). Grant number: 120K215

User Experience as a basis for Management Decision Making Processes

The main objective of this thesis was to study the influence that user-centric design has on the management of product development processes. The goal was to identify how the success factors for project management can be adapted to the industrial context of complex systems. Furthermore, the aim was to study how the value of user experience can be delivered towards the customer surface. The main objective was approached with theoretical and empirical analysis. A literature review was conducted to distinguish the success factors in user experience related development projects. Qualitative interviews with two case companies and their customer representatives were held to bring a practical viewpoint on the studied phenomenon in a complex systems environment. As a result of the study, some implications could be drawn. Regarding the applicability of the success factors, the results indicated that a substantial amount of project management success factors can also be applied to the user experience environment within complex systems. These can be mostly understood as fundamental competitive factors for an organization. For example, involving senior management and representatives from different divisions to the development project will help creating a joint understanding of the value of the system’s aspects. The value of certain management practices was seen to differ in the research context, reflecting with the characteristics of complex systems. Concrete prototypes are seen particularly effective to make a solid understanding of the value of user experience. Instead of involving customers in all product development phases, a more effective approach in the earlier stages is to utilize a collective customer feedback method. The customers in the industrial context do not place a high value on the hedonic aspects, but rather focus on rational and service-based aspects. When aiming to make an impact with user experience, the management should expand their offering beyond the actual product towards a service based experience model. As an implication of the findings, a modified version of the project management success factors was presented to the industrial context of complex systems