The Mission - To Playtest
Introduction
My mission is to empower you to take control of running your own usability playtests. By following the steps in this guide, you will gain a solid understanding of what usability is, why it is important to the player experience, and how to assess the usability of your game.
This book aims to remove the three main barriers to doing usability playtesting:
Core knowledge - we’ll begin with a primer on usability and usability playtesting. No prior knowledge is assumed.
The process - we’ll then go step-by-step through the process of running a usability playtest to a level where your team will have confidence in the results.
Budget - you'll learn how to run a usability playtest for as close to zero cost as possible.
The guidance in this book will apply to any type of game on any platform.
The mission isn’t just about empowering you to improve your game however, it’s also about how playtesting enhances the team. We’ll see that next when we discuss the framing of the book.
Key Takeaway
In this book you’re going to learn to do usability playtesting yourself, at as low a cost as possible, whilst delivering results with a high degree of trust.
Next: 2. The Frame