This is the second entry in my UX portfolio series. If you have not read the first one, you can find it here 👈️
Flood-It! one of the primary demo titles used in my training with Google Analytics 4
Task Analysis vs Self-Reported Metrics
This week, a majority of our discussion focused on the differences between task completion metrics and self-reported metrics. The former is primarily an objective measurement of user behavior which is extremely beneficial for measuring goals and benchmarking performance. Coming from a background in computer science the cold, hard objectivity of task completion metrics presents a sort of finite and pleasing measurement of user experience. That said, objective measurement alone fails to capture how or why users feel a certain way about the experience. One might imagine how a game, reduced to a simple button that allows users to win with a simple click, would produce seemingly positive and efficient success rates yet produce an unengaging experience. This is where more subjective measures are needed.
Masahiro Sakurai in his series on Creating Games describes an important aspect of this balance between task completion and subjective feel in his planning & design episode on rewards. If you are an aspiring game developer, or simply interested in how games are made, I cannot recommend subscribing to this channel enough.
A3: Web Analytics Orientation & Testing Plan
My cohort and I also began some introductory training with Google Analytics 4 in preparation for our upcoming research studies. Web analytics are one method commonly used today to capture task completion metrics as well as other measures of a digital application’s performance such as conversion rates or traffic data. Capturing analytics in games is something I have some pre-existing background in from my time developing Wake one of the flagship projects for Open Game Data.
For the development of MOTHER², collecting analytics could present valuable insights for balancing the pacing and combat of the game once the alpha release is shipped. Capturing timestamps between the completion of key events in the game’s story can provide developers insight into the amount time players spend on each segment of the game. These measurements can then be used as a sort of early warning system for designers looking to suss out pain points in the progression of the game.
The UX portfolio series continues on. You can continue reading here. ⏩️