Usability testing

Wii sports resort

Our team is working on a project that uses 3D and gesture technology. We wanted to understand gesture based input devices out in the market and experience them first hand to see how they were being used. For this reason we looked at Wii. We conducted a usability test on the Wii, testing both generic Wii menu interactions, and the gameplay interactions on the Wii Sports Resort.

The reason we chose to evaluate Wii was because in a way it was a pre-cursor to the remote-free gesture technology like Kinect and also because it is generally regarded as having a very simple intuitive interaction model. We chose Wii sports resort in particular because it uses the latest hardware like the gyroscope in the Motion+ accessory to help improve accuracy of gestures. We wanted to test whether interacting with a device like Wii remote is easier than hand gestures alone like in Kinect and which one is more enjoyable. If that was true, we wanted to learn why
that was. In general we also wanted to understand how users interact with gesture based input and how intuitive these interaction models are.

The protocol we used

We first asked participants about their general gameplay habits and if they were familiar with the Wii. Participants were asked to open the game from the Wii home menu, and navigate to both the Swordplay and Table Tennis games. They were then asked to play a couple rounds of each game. After two rounds of a game had been completed, we interviewed the participants about their experience playing the game: what they thought about the controls, level of difficulty, and their level of enjoyment. After both games had been completed, we asked them to rate their overall experience of gameplay, and to give specific examples.

What we found

We quickly found that mappings between controls and actions took a minute or two to learn.
Participants were also unsure of how close to “real world” their actions had to be, such as not knowing how exactly to hold the Wii remote when going through the Swordplay game. Participants were unsure of how much force they had to apply in order to successfully swing a paddle, for instance. Participants also tended to ignore text help or warnings on-screen. However, the players quickly mastered gameplay interactions, enjoyed themselves, and found the haptic and visual feedback of button presses to be useful.

After the participants had left, we wondered why people seem to master the Wii faster than they master in-air gestures. Based on our observations and participant responses, we think the tangibility and haptic feedback of a physical controller provides a more concrete mapping, helping the user to feel more in-control of the situation.

Learnings

We conducted this usability testing in a very organized way with two cameras one to record the participants expressions, gestures, body movements. The other to record the screen. We had a facilitator, one person in charge of the cameras and two for taking notes. This system worked really efficiently for us.