If you’ve never participated in a usability playtest before, it might be helpful to paint a vivid picture of what it looks like.

A few weeks ago your team decided that they needed to evaluate whether their game’s onboarding process was effective or not. The game was relatively simple, at least they think so anyway, but they’ve never seen a player in their target audience encounter their game for the first time. Of note, the game has a novel feature that players will not have seen before, and it is important that this feature works as intended. It was decided that a usability playtest would be the best way to give the team the necessary feedback on their design decisions, and today is the day when six players will be coming in to play the game for the first time.


At 10am, the first player has arrived at your studio. A small office has been set up as an improv playtest room, it has a desk where the player can sit and play the game, while the rest of the team will be watching from outside. The team don’t have to peer through a window at the player, as the game’s display is being mirrored and sent to a large display at the other side of the office where they can observe and make notes.


You welcome the player and show them to the improv playtest room where they are made to feel comfortable. You tell them that it is not them that is being tested today, but the game. You ask them to sign an NDA form which outlines that the game they’re about to see today is not released yet, and they should not share or discuss what they see on social media or forums. They are then told what they will be doing today, they’ll be asked to play a game just as they normally would, they’ll be in the room on their own, then in about 40 minutes time you’ll come back and have a chat with them about the game. The full session will take about 1 hour. They are told they don’t need to make notes or talk out loud, just play the game as if they were playing at home. The player begins playing the game, and you leave the room.


You join your colleagues at the other side of the office where you can all observe the player’s interactions with the game along with a video feed of their facial expressions. The facial expression camera is really there to check that the player is focussing on the game but might capture any broad emotional indicators such as frustration or surprise. The more important aspect of the video feed is the game itself, it’s this which the team will be focussing their attention on.


As the player progresses through the game’s onboarding, the team observe and document many design elements that are working as intended, but also a series of issues. For example, the player skips through all tutorial text, they do not appear to notice important feedback messages at critical times, and they do not appear to be using some of the game’s systems and mechanics, including the novel feature, in a way in which the team intended.


After a period of 40 minutes, you enter the playtest room again, and say to the player that we’re now going to have a chat about the game. You already have a list of all the key issues you observed from the playtest, it’s now time to find out why they occurred. You set about interviewing the player, carefully guiding the discussion so that the player reveals to you the reasons behind why they did what they did. To an observer, it looks like you’re just having a chat about the game, however this is anything but that, this is a very carefully controlled discussion to avoid leading questions or revealing any information which may influence the answers.


At the end of the interview, you have managed to extract the necessary information from the player which will help the team to reduce the game’s friction points. You thank the player for coming in today, you pay them for their time, and show them out of the studio. As you show the player out of the studio, you notice that the next player has already arrived, ready for their playtest session to begin. While the new player is filling out the NDA form, the team are briefly discussing what they observed and already thinking about potential improvements.


The next morning
When the team come back into the studio the next day they meet together and go over all the issues they found. They prioritise the issues to address immediately, then outline a plan for actioning the changes to be made. This plan is communicated to the wider team so everyone knows what was found and what is being done about it.


The final things the team do is put a date in the diary for the next playtest, the purpose of which will be to confirm that the changes have been implemented successfully.

Next: 17. How Usability Playtesting Helps Improve Team Performance