Voices of UX
What we can learn from our non-target audience
UX lessons from Razbuten’s “Gaming For A Non-Gamer” video series
In the past few years, I’ve been reentering the realm of video games. It started with buying a Nintendo Switch, sinking hundreds of hours into Breath of the Wild and Stardew Valley, and has culminated in me building my first gaming PC. I found a new hyperfixation in Baldur’s Gate 3 (BG3), and when I burned myself out on that, I began my search for the next action-fantasy game of my dreams. I landed on Elden Ring — which was a big skill jump, considering how long it had taken me to master the keyboard controls in BG3, a menu-based game where you can take as long as you want to strategize and make decisions. However, the difficult reputation of Elden Ring and other FromSoftware titles was irresistible to me as someone who loves to struggle through learning something difficult just to say “it wasn’t even hard”.
Unfortunately, Elden Ring was hard. I died, without exaggeration, around 40 times in the tutorial alone. The difficulty was exacerbated by my lack of expertise with keyboard controls. In my search for tips and tricks, I stumbled across a video series from a Youtube creator, Razbuten. His video series, Gaming For A Non-Gamer, details a number of “informal experiments” that he conducted with his wife, who had virtually no experience with video games. This series brought to my attention how much background knowledge goes into effectively playing, and even enjoying, video games — even the simple or ‘basic’ ones.
While I struggled when starting out with Baldur’s Gate because I didn’t understand the DnD lore and was new to keyboard controls, Razbuten’s wife struggled because she was overwhelmed by the mechanics of games in general.
This was an interesting perspective that I had never considered. After all, I was so young when I played my first video game that I don’t remember the learning curve at all.
So — what is gaming like for a non-gamer? And what the heck does this have to do with UX?
While Razbuten describes his non-gamer video series as “informal experiments”, I believe he’s being a bit humble. The process pretty closely resembles a user research interview — right down to how he introduces a task, avoids leading questions, and only intervenes to offer assistance when the participant gets stuck or frustrated. The main difference between these experiments and typical UX research is that Razbuten’s wife is not the products’ target audience… which ties in with my first comparison:
Experiences can be intimidating for beginners
In many video games, a certain level of player experience is assumed. While there is often a tutorial sequence, they don’t cover the absolute basics, like button placement. Your complete range of actions as a player is usually hidden in a menu to maintain immersion — a fact that complete beginners aren’t privy to. This can lead to the player button-mashing, constantly looking down at their controller instead of the game itself, missing possible actions altogether, or even quitting the game.
This assumption that players have a basic understanding of game mechanics can lead to other issues, like missing plot elements and tutorial content, not understanding how to interact with the game environment, and avoiding interactions with helpful non-playable characters that have the potential to further the story or give the player quests. These are all things that Razbuten notes in his series — and things that I can relate to, as someone who’s experienced but simply a little rusty.
The moral of this story is that the things that experts think are obvious might not be obvious to new or inexperienced users.
Regarding software products, UXers often assume that their target users will understand how to complete complex tasks. For example, a MLOps Engineer definitely already knows how to create, train, and deploy a machine learning model, so we probably don’t need to provide informational content to guide them. However, these situations always make me think of new team members, who are learning on the job and are new to navigating the product or UI.
Even if your ideal or target audience does understand how to do something, is it disruptive to them to help out inexperienced users by including informational popovers or alerts? After all, even if a user understands the technical process of a task, your UI might be unfamiliar to them. For example, I have a very firm understanding of how to draw a sketch of a cat with a pencil, but doing so in Photoshop would likely take me some time to figure out.
Not everyone has the same skill level, and since we don’t often have the same limitations as game developers, who have to walk the line between helpful and immersive, UXers should keep inclusivity in mind when designing product experiences.
Adaptive learning for all skill levels
Learning a game is surprisingly comparable to learning how to use a software product. While the goal is very different, the feeling of completing a game tutorial and a product tutorial is the same — you can tell when you’re being taught something, often because you’re not doing the actual thing you came there to do.
In games, developers can get around this feeling of stagnation by disguising the tutorial as an introduction to the story. Breath of the Wild is an example of a game that does this well — the tutorial sequence is sequestered to a small portion of the map, and the story is integrated in a way that doesn’t feel like its only purpose is to teach you the controls. Other games opt for optional tutorials that you can discover yourself, or in the case of Elden Ring, tutorials that you’re dropped into if you die too quickly after starting the game.
In worst-case scenarios, though, you’re acutely aware of when you’re not being taught something. Take learning Photoshop, for example. Photoshop is an incredibly powerful and adaptive piece of software — when you know how to use it. If you’ve watched tutorials on how to create things in Photoshop, you know that the possibilities are practically endless. However, this ‘limitless’ nature also means that the learning curve is extremely high. After all, if it was intuitive, there wouldn’t be an entire sub-industry of people capitalizing on teaching people how to use it. If you’re going in blind, you might be able to figure out how to draw a scribble with the pen tool or drop a shape on your canvas. But if you have a specific goal in mind, you’re going to have to put in hours of following tutorials or using trial and error before you can make something you’re happy with. When you’re at this stage, you might feel lost or frustrated, and if you’re trying it for fun instead of for a job or commitment, you might just give up entirely. (Can you tell that I don’t know how to use Photoshop?)
Obviously, video games and software (or whatever else you’re designing an experience for) aren’t expected to adhere to the same standards. While gamers are likely looking for an immersive experience, where an oversaturation of tutorial content is unwelcome, software designers don’t have to worry about maintaining an aesthetic in the same way. Non-game designers have a lot more freedom with how they teach users how to use their product — from popovers, tooltips, and page descriptions to quick starts and documentation (most of which are included as components on PatternFly, in case you were wondering).
If you’re experienced with video games or even just a specific franchise, an unskippable tutorial sequence might feel slow and repetitive. If you’re inexperienced, even an extended tutorial might not be enough. In Razbuten’s video, he speaks about how, for his wife, many tutorial sequences simply didn’t explain enough of what she needed to succeed at games. These tutorials tend to assume a basic understanding of video games, like physics, limitations, and button placement. One way to combat this learning curve is to…
Show, not tell
In Breath of the Wild, Razbuten’s wife was able to immerse herself in the game much more easily than in others, and he attributes that partially to the way new actions are introduced. Instead of telling the player to press the A button, BOTW shows the user where the A button is located on the controller. This way, instead of having to look down at the controller to find the button, new players can simply press the button.
UXers can use this lesson in a similar way. Think of places in your UI where you tell your user where to find something they’re looking for. Messages like, “To see all of your projects, go to the Home page” are good examples.
A great way to “show, not tell” your users where to go is to include a text link when you mention a different page or component. This way, they can go straight from reading your message to going to the place they should go. Easy peasy. The user isn’t forced to hunt for the right page, which could be frustrating and distracting from their goal.
For me, Razbuten’s Gaming for Non-Gamers series sparked a lot of comparisons between game design and UX. Even if you’re not interested in video games, this series showcases some interesting experiments and reinforces important lessons about inclusivity for users of all experience levels.
Have a story of your own? Write with us! Our community thrives on diverse voices — let’s hear yours.
