33. Atomic Behaviours - Adding Granularity to your Observation Template
Step 2. Preparation
We’ve previously discussed a ‘good enough’ structure for your observation template. You could indeed stop there, but we can add more granularity to help the team focus their observation energy. One way of doing this is to go down to the level of atomic behaviours in the observation template.
Let’s begin by looking at an example. Let’s imagine the goal of a playtest is to evaluate if the tutorial is effective, and part of that tutorial is for the player to buy an item from in-game store. The team could meet together and agree upon a list of ideal behaviours they’d like to see from the player, such as:
[ ] The player did not skip through the explanation text.
[ ] The player was able to find the required item to buy
[ ] The player was able to make the purchase successfully
[ ] The player was able to equip the item
[ ] The player tried out the new item when prompted
This atomic behaviours-based approach helps the team think through important parts of the game in a more detailed way. It’s perhaps easy for the team to forget how many actions are involved in order to do a task successfully, breaking it down in this may may surface the possibility that perhaps some aspects of the game are indeed a potential friction point for the player.
Some thoughts on how to write these atomic behaviours:
Atomic actions - each statement is reduced to a binary decision, either the player did do it, or did not.
Language - note the phrasing here, they are phrased as if the player has successfully done what the designer intended, so if there are any boxes left un-ticked at the end of the session, then you can quickly identify areas of concern by glancing through the list and bring those into the interview. You don't have to phrase the behaviours this way, but it's one approach which makes it easy to scan through the list and identify any unmet behavioural expectations.
Key Takeaway
Being more granular with your observation sheet can be a useful approach to surface the number of tasks required to successfully complete a desired action. It can also highlight at which precise step the player had difficulty.