作者：Steve Bromley

用户体验

用户体验是个很难定义的术语，在包含许多竞争性元素电子游戏领域中尤其如此。简单地说，用户体验就是系统（游戏邦注：或游戏）让玩家产生何种感觉。

作为一种设计哲学，它包括将用户洞察力融入设计过程各个阶段中、衡量用户体验（游戏邦注：即用户的感觉），然后使用这个洞察力来指导开发。这使得其不仅只是设计过程中的一部分，而是项目开发的指导。当然，理解用户的感觉是很难的。虽然有计量生物学或访谈之类许多方法，但是没有一种方法是完美的，每种方法都有自己的特色和弊端。

user experience(from etunch.com)

用户体验并非可用性

用户体验不只是可用性，但是两者之间时常有直接的联系。

可用性关注的是“使用的便利性”，确保任务能够被理解，所设系统允许人们实现他们的目标。这包括可视性、反应时间和学习性等因素。

当可用性影响到用户对某个产品的感觉时，可用性和用户体验便有所联系。这种联系可能是让玩家高兴的舒适流程，也可能是让他们感到愤怒的不良流程。想想看，如果用户的电脑没有反应或者按键时产生错误的动作，玩家会感到多么愤怒。因而，劣质的可用性可能影响产品或系统的用户体验。

用户体验和游戏

在游戏中，用户体验变得更为复杂。在传统软件开发中，用户的目标很清晰，通常就是“可以又快又简单地开展任务”，情感不应该成为互动中的主要部分（游戏邦注：除了“不可激怒用户”之外）。在游戏中，目标就没有这么简单了，速度和便利都不是主要的目的。

此时，用户体验指的就是你的游戏应该产生的情感或感觉，而且必须确保游戏能够实现这个目标。比如，《Just Dance》含有某些游戏想要让玩家产生的关键情感和反应，比如“群体乐趣”、“开怀大笑”和“让玩家离开沙发”，游戏设计应努力去引出这些反应。

有些元素是所有游戏所共有的，比如游戏不应该导致玩家产生不必要的挫败感。但是，在游戏设计时为用户体验设定可衡量的目标是很重要的，必须时刻保证这些目标得以实现。

游戏中的用户体验是新兴领域，学术界对此也颇有兴趣。未来，计量生物学等技术和来自其他领域的用户体验方法论的应用会增加我们对游戏用户感觉的理解和衡量能力。

游戏邦注：本文发稿于2010年10月29日，所涉时间、事件和数据均以此为准。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

What is user experience?

Steve Bromley

It’s been a year since I started this blog. Maybe it’s time to answer the question “What is User Experience”, and finally explain what the UX in the Blog’s title refers to.

User Experience

User experience is a difficult subject to define, particularly in the field of video games and contains many competing elements. At its simplest, user experience is “how does a system (or game) make the user feel?”

As a design philosophy it includes integrating user insight into all stages of a design process (UCD), measuring the user’s experience (what the feel about it), and then using this insight to inform the development. This makes it more than just a ‘step’ in the design process, and instead it becomes an overarching philosophy informing development. Of course, it’s difficult to understand what a user is feeling – although there are many common methods, such as ‘think-aloud’, biometrics or interviews, no method is perfect, and each has its own idiosyncrasies.

User experience is not usability

User experience is more than just usability, although there can often be a direct link between the two.

Usability focuses on the ‘ease of use’, ensuring that the task at hand can be understood, and that a system allows people to achieve their goals. This encompasses factors such as visibility, response times, and learn-ability.

Usability and User Experience link when usability affects how a user feels about the product, whether this is through an easy working process making the user smile, or (and much more likely), a poor workflow making them angry. Consider how annoyed people get when their computer isn’t responsive, or a button causes the wrong action to be performed. Poor usability can therefore influence the user experience of a product or system.

User experience and games.

Within games, user experience becomes a more complicated field. In traditional software development, the goals of the user are clear, typically “perform a task quickly and easily”, and emotion should not play a major part in the interaction (beyond ‘don’t annoy the user’). In games, the goal is not so simple, as neither speed nor ease are the primary objectives.

Instead user experience becomes about defining the emotions or feelings your game should create, and ensuring that the game makes this happen. For example, chart favourite Just Dance will have some key emotions and responses it wants to create in its players, such as ‘group enjoyment’, ‘laughter’ and ‘make the players actually get off the sofa’, and so will have been designed to elicit these responses.

Some elements are not unique to each game, for example it’s common that game’s don’t want to cause unnecessary frustration, however it is important when designing games to declare measurable goals for the user experience, and regularly ensure that these are being met.

User Experience in games is an emerging field, with lots of academic interest in its progress. It will be interesting to see what the future holds, as techniques such as biometrics and the application of user experience methodologies from other fields increase our understanding, and ability to measure, people’s feelings around games. (Source: Steve Bromley’s UX Blog)