Developing a coding scheme to detect usability and fun problems in computer games for young children

W. Barendregt and M.M. Bekker

Department of Industrial Design, TU Eindhoven, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

This paper describes the development of a coding scheme to find both usability and fun problems in young children’s computer games during a user test.

Testing products with representative users is one of the core aspects of user-centred design. Apart from performing a user test to determine quantitative measures like efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction, another goal is to identify parts of a system that cause users trouble and need to be changed. When evaluating computer games for children both usability and fun problems can occur, and both are important to fix. However, no coding scheme of behavior that indicates these problems in computer games is available yet. The coding scheme we propose is based on the list of breakdown indication types of the DEtailed Video ANalysis method (DEVAN). This method was developed to detect usability problems in task-based products for adults. However, the new coding scheme for children’s computer games should take into account that games are not task-based, that fun is an important factor besides usability, and that children behave differently than adults. For example, a game usually provides challenge as part of the fun, but what are indications that the challenge is too high? Another example is that some children get very quiet when they do not know how to play a game. Therefore a lack of action may also be an indication of a problem. For these situations the definitions of existing breakdown indications need to be changed, new breakdown indications need to be added and some indications have to be removed.

The paper first describes the list of DEVAN breakdown indications. Subsequently, the non task-based nature of games and its influence on the coding scheme is discussed. Furthermore, this paper describes new breakdown indications that reflect observed behavior indicating problems, illustrated with examples from user tests of various computer games. Finally, the paper discusses briefly how the reliability of the final coding scheme was tested.

Paper presented at Measuring Behavior 2005 , 5^th International Conference on Methods and Techniques in Behavioral Research, 30 August - 2 September 2005, Wageningen, The Netherlands.

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