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This chapter explains why it is necessary and important to have a holistic vision of user experience for integrating action and meaning in cross-cultural design. Following Chapter 1, Chapter 2 continues to review the unintegrated situation of cross-cultural technology design from the angle of usability and user experience. It maintains that the narrow conceptualization of usability that only focuses on action in technology design practices, is complicated by the narrow representations of culture that just reflect static meaning, resulting in a disconnect between action and meaning in cross-cultural design. This chapter first examines the usability concept and traces the conceptual movement from usability to user experience for a broader vision. Then it surveys cross-cultural usability research and practices and probes into the disconnect between action and meaning in technology design.

A holistic vision of user experience is essential for integrating action and meaning in cross-cultural design. This chapter answers the questions How and What in developing a holistic view of user experience. It first explains how this holistic view of user experience forms and functions by bringing in three strands of practice theories—activity theory, British cultural studies, and genre theory—to investigate a dual mediation process in technology use and to study affordances emerging through use. It then advances a methodology for analysis and design in cross-cultural design, Culturally Localized User Experience (CLUE). The CLUE approach highlights the praxis of use, i.e., user localization that makes a usable technology meaningful to an individual. Seven defining features of CLUE are outlined to describe what the framework of CLUE is. This chapter lays the foundation for the presentation of use cases and the development of the CLUE framework in later chapters.

This chapter further develops the framework of CLUE with a consolidated discussion of five use cases presented earlier. It situates those cases on a broader horizon and reviews the trends of user localization across the sites. Thereby it illuminates how a holistic view of user experience is both situated and constructed in local contexts: To explore the “situatedness,” the first section of the chapter looks at how a local use of mobile messaging technology is situated in the surrounding contexts as the outcome of the interactions of various cultural influences; to investigate the “constructiveness,” the second section demonstrates how user localization functions as cultural consumption and how “genius loci” is achieved. Based on this holistic view of user experience, the third section examines affordances as dialogic relation through a dual mediation process of messaging use and suggests designing beyond operational affordances and cultivating social affordances for local use.

This concluding chapter suggests future directions for the research and practice of cross-cultural technology in a glocalization age. Centering on a dialogical approach, it analyzes what the cross-cultural design community could learn from the user localization efforts to design for, invoke, nurture, encourage, support, and sustain culturally localized user experience —the consummate experience—for emerging technologies. It studies the characteristics and value as well as the role and functions of user localization in a technology’s whole design, production, and use cycle and discusses how to route those user efforts into the design process to better address user needs and expectations in this rising participatory culture. Real-world examples are supplemented to further the discussion beyond the case study when needed.

The CLUE framework advances cross-cultural user research as praxis—a dialogic design activity that has its ethical and political implications in local contexts as well. This chapter explores the methodological consequence of the CLUE. The first part of the chapter introduces the case of the book, the comparative study of mobile messaging use in American and Chinese contexts between 2003 and 2006. It reviews the phenomenon of mobile messaging use in a larger context and investigates what challenges and implications this case has brought to the practices and research of cross-cultural design. The second part of the chapter discusses the analytical values and methodological potentials of the CLUE framework for cross-cultural user experience research with the case study as the example.

This chapter projects possible human futures with robot sex workers (RSWs). These are models of robots with integrated capabilities designed to enhance human sexual pleasure. Using attachment theory as a framework, concrete questions about what might constitute human-robot sexual and emotionally intimate relationships are presented for discussion, including design and cultural issues. Mori’s Uncanny Valley theory is used as a springboard for a new model to include temporal and cultural influences on people who interact with robots, the Robot Accommodation Process Theory (RAPT). Finally, the ideas of how RSW will be normalized into individual human-robot relationships as well as how the relationships will be valued by culture over time are used as a premise for building theory in the areas of meaningful and affectionate human-robot relationships.

As part of conducting research, reporting must occur. In addition to communicating the research result accurately, a report must motivate the team to act on the result, which often means modifying their build to increase the quality of their product. Approaches used to report user research findings back to the development team are just as important as the findings themselves. If the findings are not communicated to the development team effectively, the developers may not take action and miss potentially critical changes that could have made a difference in the development cycle and overall success of the project. If user researchers conduct the best possible study, identify the most critical issues, but fail to communicate or explain the findings in a way that motivates the development team, then changes may not occur. Many chapters in this book discuss methodologies for conducting user research; this chapter focuses on approaches to communicate the findings to the development team.

Game Analytics (GA) provides new ways to conduct user research, counteracting some of the weaknesses of traditional approaches while retaining essential compatibility with the methodologies of GUR. This chapter provides an overview of what GA is and how it fits within the daily operations of game development across studio sizes, with an emphasis on the intersection with GUR and the synergies that can be leveraged across analytics and user research.

Mobile games are deeply integrated into players’ everyday lives. In this chapter, we introduce methods such as paper prototyping and diary studies that consider both the unique form-factor of mobile touchscreen devices and the need to understand users’ context for gameplay. We consider the constraints of lab-based research for mobile games, and discuss strategies for conducting mobile studies in and out of the lab.

The increased interest in virtual reality (VR) has yielded a lot of studies and development in both research and game design. Simulation sickness is an issue experienced by a significant subset of players in VR. This chapter focuses on the challenges this issue poses for user research, and suggests practical considerations for researchers to minimize legal and ethical risks.

This chapter provides an introduction to the field of Games User Research (GUR) and to the present book. GUR is an interdisciplinary field of practice and research concerned with ensuring the optimal quality of usability and user experience in digital games. GUR inevitably involves any aspect of a video game that players interface with, directly or indirectly. This book aims to provide the foundational, accessible, go-to resource for people interested in GUR. It is a community-driven effort—it is written by passionate professionals and researchers in the GUR community as a handbook and guide for everyone interested in user research and games. We aim to provide the most comprehensive overview from an applied perspective, for a person new to GUR, but which is also useful for experienced user researchers.

This paper presents a set of heuristics (PLAY and GAP) for game design and discusses the history of heuristics for games, describes the use of these heuristics, summarizes research demonstrating their effectiveness, and describes a hypothetical model that reviewers use when evaluating a game. The usage by designers and evaluators when reviewing two released games is also compared. Overall, heuristics were found to be much more effective than informal reviews and their use led not only to problem identification, but to suggested fixes, possible enhancements, and effective aspects of the existing designs.

Practising Games User Research within a video game company possesses unique challenges, ranging from tight turnaround of findings to collaborating with the development team and incorporating the needs of the rest of company. This chapter describes processes and best practices for applying GUR in the industry while identifying and avoiding potential pitfalls.

This chapter describes each of the eight methods for player research we have used, and covers why the method is used in the context of player research, how it is executed, the time taken, and what is delivered as a result. Each of the methods has been refined over the years to reflect the balance between time and budget required, and accurate and actionable results delivered. The strengths of each of the methods with respect to player appeal, understanding, usability, experience, and successful monetization are presented.

As user experience (UX) research in game development becomes more established, many studios are now incorporating UX practices within their studio. However, the maturity level of UX within a studio can vary widely, from those who are hostile towards UX up to those who embrace UX at all levels in the organization. This chapter is for both game developers and Games User Researchers who are interested in assessing where they currently are on a UX maturity scale, and also keen to understand what more could be done to become more player-focused.

User testing games does not have to be expensive and time-consuming. In this chapter we focus on the specific situation where the resources, expertise, and time available for user testing is limited, as is usually the case for indie studios. This means adapting affordable and accessible user testing processes for indie studios. We emphasize the contribution of analytics techniques in this adaptation process, and describe different methods of how to incorporate analytics into other Games User Research methods.

In this chapter we provide a pragmatic description of how GUR processes can be employable and impactful even with limited resources and prior user research experience. We also provide guidelines for how GUR processes can start small and be iteratively expanded upon to become an integral part of a developer’s working processes. Included are step-by-step guidelines for starting to work with GUR.