Validating design decisions is the usual way usability playtests are run in the games industry and is considered ‘good practice’, i.e. you should be clear on the reasons for wanting to run a playtest. What this means in practice is that the team have come up with a list of design questions which they would like feedback on, and the usability playtest is the best way to get those answers.

This list of design questions are sometimes referred to as hypotheses, where each hypothesis is simply a statement about the team’s expected experience of a design element. For example, a hypothesis might be, “Players are able to perceive, understand, and react to the Low Health Warning appropriately’. This hypothesis could be assessed by both observing what the player does in-game, and then interviewing them afterwards to explore their understanding of the Low Health Warning.

To generate this list of hypotheses for the playtest, the team needs to align. But what does alignment mean? There is no point running a playtest about feature X, if feature Y is the one which is more important at this time. The team needs to align then on what is the most beneficial set of features to evaluate for this moment.

One way of creating this alignment is to poll the team, what are the key questions to evaluate at this moment? Once a list is captured across the team come together to align on a prioritised list, i.e. this list of hypotheses will best help the team at this point in time.

It would also be useful to check previous playtest reports, is there anything that could be re-assessed to confirm the re-design works?

Finally, from the list of hypotheses it’s beneficial to give a heads-up to any team members who might be impacted by the results of the playtest, i.e. certain members of the team could expect changes their way soon, do they have bandwidth to deal with that?

The purpose of running a playtest is to provide maximum momentum to the team at any given moment. The team should do a final scan of the list of hypotheses to ensure that the results would indeed propel the team forwards from a design perspective.

Step 1 Outcome - A list of hypotheses (research questions) have been generated which the team align on.

Key Takeaway

It is important that the team is aligned on which hypotheses should be evaluated in the upcoming playtest.

Next: Step 2. Preparation > 23. A Preparation Checklist