This paper describes and gives an overview of User Experience (UX) professionals' work practices-their environment, practices, tools, and challenges. First, we reviewed 32 empirical studies about usability and UX work to identify key issues in usability and UX work practices. For the identified key issues, we collected data from 422 UX professionals surveyed in five different countries using a comprehensive questionnaire with 62 questions. Our results show that UX professionals individually know about usability and UX concepts, methods, and tools. They typically employ between one and five Human Computer Interaction (HCI) theories on average and use one to three different techniques and tools. On the organizational level, UX is involved from early to late stages and is generally well known within all levels of the organization. On the country and community level, UX professionals generally do not report themselves as belonging to a professional community, despite the fact that the survey was administered via channels of the respective communities in the survey countries. Overall, this survey shows that UX professionals have considerable work experience and strong UX expertise self-confidence. This may be considered as indicating a positive development of the UX profession.
The Game User Experience Satisfaction Scale (GUESS) is a 55-item tool assessing nine constructs describing video game satisfaction. While the development of the GUESS followed best practices and resulted in a versatile, comprehensive tool for assessing video game user experience, responding to 55 items can be cumbersome in situations where repeated assessments are necessary. The aim of this research was to develop a shorter version of the scale for use in iterative game design, testing, and research. Two studies were conducted: the first one to create a configural model of the GUESS that was then truncated to an 18-item short scale to establish an initial level of validity and a second study with a new sample to demonstrate cross-sample validity of the 18-item GUESS scale. Results from a confirmatory factor analysis of the 18-item scale demonstrated excellent fit and construct validity to the original nine construct instrument. Use of the GUESS-18 is encouraged as a brief, practical, yet comprehensive measure of video game satisfaction for practitioners and researchers.
Digital technologies have changed human behavior, especially the characteristics of products and their functionalities related to interface and interaction. Smartphone users had to accept touchscreen interfaces without sufficient evidence of the effectiveness of these digital interfaces over physical analog interfaces. Moreover, smartphone gaming industries have introduced mobile games with touch-based interfaces that may or may not be effective for game users. This study aims to find empirical evidence for the effectiveness between analog and digital interfaces for smartphone game controls through two usability tests: (a) a pilot study to compare the data values between direct and indirect input control with six participants and (b) a main study to investigate the effects of tap-only afford between digital and analog input control from the results of the pilot study. Both qualitative and quantitative research methods were used to analyze the usability test. A total of 81 participants were enrolled in the main study and divided into two large groups to compare one-handed and two-handed input controls. Nine participants in each group played smartphone games that were based on different input control tasks. This study found that direct touchscreen interaction was more effective for two-handed input control tasks and indirect physical input control was more effective for one-handed input control tasks.
We propose a novel cross-sequential approach to accelerating the collection of user feedback while providing a broad perspective by analyzing samples of users at various stages of service and product experience. User experience changes over time as the relationship between user and product evolves. Understanding temporal changes is important for designing positive long-term user experience and supporting customer loyalty. However, companies and researchers face time and cost constraints, which is why longitudinal studies tracking user experience over an extended period of time are extremely rare. The cross-sequential approach we propose reduces these barriers without compromising user-feedback quality. We tested the cross-sequential approach in evaluating the user experience of a commercial Internet security service and identified user experience spanning seven months in only seven weeks with two online surveys. We compared the cross-sequential approach to the cross-sectional approach commonly used in the industry. The cross-sectional approach identified differences between cohorts of 252 users. The cross-sequential approach, on the other hand, allowed us to identify changes in individual users' user experience. These changes could also be tracked to different usage phases. This information could guide the design of better long-term user experience for the service. The positive and negative changes in user enjoyment over time are relevant as they were reflected in users' loyalty to the service, replicating results from longitudinal studies. Thus, the cross-sequential approach can be especially useful when quick, cost-effective user feedback is needed regarding extended periods of using services or products.
We present a method for visualizing and analyzing card sorting data aiming to develop an in-depth and effective information architecture and navigation structure. One of the well-known clustering t...
