The second stage in making sense of the playtesting findings is to understand why things happened as they did, i.e. which factors best explain the player’s behaviour.

To engage in sensemaking of the playtest data we’ll make use of:

1. Player observation notes on hypotheses.
   
   

2. Player observation notes for moments between hypotheses (behaviour log of interesting moments).
   
   

3. Player interview notes.
   
   

A reminder that the goal is to aim for the most plausible explanation of why players did what they did. Ideally you should be getting to the source of the problem.

Process

For the hypotheses that are a ‘pass’, it’s likely that no further explanation is needed, the design is working as intended.

The sensemaking mainly occurs for the hypotheses that have failed, what caused this to happen? There is no set process here, but taking into consideration what the player did before, during, and after the point of interest (behavioural notes) and the player’s explanation from the interview, you can start to identify possible causes of the problem.

Then, to understand what might be the source of each possible cause you should discuss which cues you are using as a basis for your explanation.

These cues are a key part of the sensemaking process, they could be a comment from a player, a note from an observation, and/or a game element you making use of to construct a plausible explanation.

Example The team might construct the following explanation during sensemaking:

“The player was not using an item as intended (the cause of the hypothesis to fail). We think this was due to the fact that she skipped through the explanation text in the tutorial (from the granular observation note). When interviewed, she said that she did not mean to skip the tutorial explanation, she accidentally tapped a button and the instruction went to the next step.”

The cues being used here to construct a plausible explanation are

• Incorrect use of item by player (what happened)

• Tutorial text being skipped (what caused this to happen)

• Player did not intend to skip (from interview)

• The game allows for skipping to happen (design)

• Player confirms they’re not sure what the item is for (from interview).

At this point it’s possible the team might start brainstorming solutions, these could be captured here or dealt with at a later stage.

Outcome

The team have a plausible explanation(s) for each failed hypothesis.

Key Takeaway

The goal of making sense of your playtest findings is to arrive at plausible explanations rather than accurate ones. You can do this by making sense of your observation and interview notes to get to the source of the problem.

Next: 56. Prioritising Findings