This is the third entry in my UX portfolio series. If you have not read the previous one, you can find it here 👈️
Parsec a remote desktop platform used for remote playtesting & Games User Research.
Wrapping up GA4
In the last few weeks of our user research course, we concluded our essential training with Google Analytics 4 based on this course by Corey Koberg. Our discussion for this unit focused primarily on events and conversions, as well as the interpretation of web analytics data. In addition, my cohort and I supplemented our training with some additional readings on practical statistics from the book Quantifying the User Experience by Jeff Sauro. Chapter 10 was of particular interest to us, which explored the correlation, regression, and ANOVA statistical methods as applied to user experience research.
While concepts from GA4 may not translate directly into my final study for games user research, the data analytics concepts and statistical methods used will be of great benefit to me as I continue my career. Collecting real-time data analytics with Firebase was a key pieces of my previous work at Field Day Learning Games, which I have now gained a greater appreciation for from my studies these past few weeks.
Planning Our Final Research Study
A larger segment of our time, including the days leading up to Independence Day weekend, saw us preparing for our final user research study for the third piece of our UX capstone. As part of our preparation, we reviewed the user recruitment practices from the fall of the first part of our capstone training, including some lectures from the Nielson Norman group. For our deliverables this week, we drafted a participant screener, research guide, and consent form for the study, outlining the skeleton that will be built upon in the weeks to come.
Preview of the participant screener
The medium of this research study, with a focus on games instead of more traditional digital mediums like apps and websites, required that I explore user testing software independently from my colleagues. For this study, I explored many different platforms that would allow me to easily share and record gameplay from testers, without the need to share potentially sensitive software for games still under development or distribute multiple copies of a particular piece of software. Where I to conduct these sessions in person, I could likely set up a small test environment with a capture card and a voice recorder that would circumvent the need for additional software.
That said because the development team of MOTHER² works asynchronously and remotely, this method of study would be impractical and likely introduce bias in the recruitment of the study, limiting participants to those in my local area. I began my research by brushing up on solutions used by similar researchers in the space, a succinct summary of which can be found in this post by Steve Bromley. I ultimately decided to use Parsec for the ease of use it offers both hosts and participants. (This article I uncovered in my research provided a wonderful overview of how Xbox utilized this platform in their user research).
The UX portfolio series continues on. You can continue reading here. ⏩️