Process of Design, Case Studies

Theory & Design of Games: Reflection Journal 5 

There is so much to say in the readings, I cant help but extract bits relevant to my research. If you want to jump directly to my qualitative study blog entry or the extended study design document.

Christopher Ireland, Qualitative Methods: From Boring to Brilliant

I admire Ireland’s emphasis on participatory design methods inclusive of the user and intend to use her Dyad focus group setup specifically in my own qualitative study pursuit. This idea was also brushed upon in the Design Research text by Will Wright in “kleenex testing”

Ireland also brings up the notion of digital ethnography and ethno-futurism and I am curios if this idea could be extended further into the realm of digital phenomenology and phenomenon-futurism? Especially when it comes to interactive storytelling or augmented real/virtual hybrids.

Tim Plowman, Ethnography and Critical Design Practice

Plowman’s text in many ways parallels the SIAT Qualitative Methods course that I’m also taking this semester. The central components of ethnographic research done and communicated well are similar to my current pursuit in phenomenology. The similarities mentioned in this text include analytic rigor, the thick description, and empathetic inquiry.

As an “intellectual leverage” the importance of empathy is especially relevant in my pursuits where “the ethnographer obtains deeper insight into the desires, beliefs, habits, motivations and understandings of behavior in a given context”. This inherently constructivist approach also makes the research question that much more challenging to decode and decipher.

Brenda Laurel, DEMO Design Improvisation – Ethnography Meets Theater

Where Plowman spoke of “situatedness” through which designed artifacts [the products of design] derive their meaning, for Laurel, it is the performative self [who we are] that is highly situated. Theatrical and improvisational techniques have a reverse effect where the context is shaping human interaction. Thus it is the designer’s goal to enable people to perform with greater pleasure, ease, or agency.

This position strongly resonates in my own research because I am infusing theatrical inspired techniques (process drama) into a better user experience for interactive narrative applications. Instead of Laurels embodied human enactment, I seek to replicate this sense of agency within the simulated game environment. My hypothesis is that when players have the opportunity to iteratively plan, play and reflect in accordance to the situation presented, they can more strongly identify with their character.

Stacey Purpura, Overview of Quantitative Methods in Design Research

Quantitative Methods have their place in design research too. If I was presently in a more industry centric position (thank goodness I’m not anymore) this article would be more useful as it covers quantitative testing across all phases of the process (concept, feature, usability, validation, & segmentation). In many ways quantitative testing is refreshing since its goal is to REDUCE complexity which qualitative research intentionally and blatantly ignores. Sometimes you just want the cold hard facts to let you know you’re on the right tracks.

The challenge of course it that the extraction of objective data can potentially limit your question. In many ways a mixed method approach can cover each other flaws nicely in breadth and depth through triangulation of sources. I hope to utilize these approaches more in the semesters to come – stay tuned!

Rob Tow, Strategy, Tactics and Heuristics for Research

Although Tow’s authoritative writing style is obfuscated by military references, the basic premise seems similar to Creswell’s “Qualitative Inquiry & Research Design”. Tow’s notion of grand strategy, strategies, and tactics can map to Creswell’s Central Question, Issue sub-questions, and procedural sub-questions. For both authors, the granular nature of tactics/procedural sub-questions is where the data collection or field of activity occurs and is exchanged. But what to do with this information is dependent on the more encompassing or unifying questions.

Nathan Shederoff, Research Methods for Designing Effective Experiences

The Design of effective experience is an elusive target – take play and games for starters. Shederoff emphasizes very experimental research avenues that address “fundamental user needs such as fulfillment of desire, pleasure and enhanced capability”. This very much relates to my qualitative study since interactive narrative is precisely the effective experience we are trying to understand.

Case in point, at the Artificial Intelligence conference in interactive narrative Technologies, a full half day session was included on theatrical improvisation strategies. How thrilling it was to see computer scientists learning basic improvisational techniques to capture attention and perhaps tell a story .

Experimental methods are one approach as Shederoff reveals – but perhaps a higher risk in terms of validation. I feel interdisciplinary methods are perhaps better suited to addressing these kinds of problems since multiple [established] domains of knowledge attempt to find a common ground.

Shederoff continues on a great closing point in connecting with your audience: “we can’t be blind to human social contexts when applying technology to the solving of problems…because technologies are rarely the important part of the solution”.

Eric Zimmerman, Play as Research

The iterative design cycle: Analyze – Design – Test, such a mantra for this field of research. In particular, Zimmerman’s description of the evolutionary aspect of a game that emerges from the muck to become an extraordinary contribution. The questions that emerge from the process of design is a strategy that I aim to emulate in my own research.

I have much to learn from his practices and already partially experienced them first hand in the Advanced Game Design Course. I hope to continue sketching and prototyping ideas soon in the SIAT gamelab. In the mean time see my previous blog post on my study design. The extracted results from this study “A Qualitative study on Creative Drama in emergent games: a survey on user affect for Façade” will be key insights into the creation of better experiences for users.