Surveying real video gamers

Next, we developed a survey to gather user data. We asked questions regarding solo versus multiplayer gaming, playtime before and during quarantine, emotions when gaming, preferred genres of games, and console and sound preferences.

Over one week, 239 responses poured in. Respondents primary consisted of members of gaming subreddits, Discord users, and personal connections of team members. Here's what we found:

Additionally, the short-answer section of the survey illuminated key user emotions and motivations when gaming:

Now that we could put a voice to the behaviors identified in quantitative data, we moved into our next phase of research: talking to real video gamers.

Interviews

We wanted to gain a firsthand account of users' experiences with pandemic gaming and sound experiences. To do so, we spoke with them about their overall experiences gaming in quarantine, playing with friends, trying new games, changing consoles, gaming with headphones, and using sound enhancing softwares. Through a second affinity diagram, we identified these high-level takeaways:

1. Gaming is an emotional experience; sentiments of competition, friendship, belonging, and adventure often make gaming memorable

2. Gamers are influenced by their friends’ behaviors

3. Multiplayer PC gaming has the most opportunity for sound experience innovation

4. Balancing sound is a main pain point when playing with others

Ideation

Individual sketching

With our newly-realized research insights, we moved into open-ended sketching. Our solutions fell in three main categories.

Scoping

As our sketches were quite varied, we created problem statement to scope our future design work. Considering our research insights and sketches, we knew this:

1. PC gamers made up the majority of our interview and survey respondents who reported behavior changes

2. Balancing audio inputs proved to be the biggest frustration among the gamers we talked to

3. Each gamer has their own preferences for sound based on factors like type of game or number of players

These core insights helped us develop our final problem statement:

PC gamers playing online games with friends need a way to balance their core audio inputs; this results in an enjoyable and customized gaming and sound experience.

Personas

With our problem statement identified, we developed personas to better understand our users’ goals and frustrations. These personas aligned with the types of gamers that we interviewed and surveyed, falling into social and serious categories.

Collaborative Sketching

We moved into collaborative sketching to ideate as a group. Each team member sketched for a few minutes, rotated to the next member’s sketch to make additions or ask questions, and so on. In doing this exercise, we considered our personas’ pain points of sound balancing and preference.

We found five key features among our sketches:

Blue Sky Sketching

At this point, much of our research and ideation was leaning toward a digital sound mixer. As a team, it was important for us to consider both feasible ideas and blue sky designs. Therefore, we launched into rapid ideation and blue sky sketching to challenge our preconceived notions of sound solutions.

Design

We ultimately felt that implementing a digital sound mixer into the Windows Game Bar was the most feasible, fun, and timely solution for this project and our user group. Many gamers currently use Windows Operating Systems because of its compatibility and high customizability for a majority of games. Implementing a widget into the pre-existing tool would fit seamlessly into current gaming routines.

Setup

Explore. Users can search for tags or keywords that relate to the game or sound experience they desire. In-game sound is accessible at the top, while other sound applications are populated below.

Loading Screen

Users are notified to adjust their sound settings using Windows Game Bar via hotkeys.

Create. Users can create and save their own preset with this feature. They can also share it to the community for others to use.

Overall, this widget promotes social connectedness while gaming, as users can converse with their friends and join a community of gamers.

Reflection

This project was an incredible learning experience, as it was my first time leading a team this size. Through remote collaboration tools, strong team morale, and a collective passion for the gaming space, it was my favorite project I've been apart of thus far.

I learned the importance of research scoping during this project, and to frame up leading questions early on to guide the process. Despite our attempts to create research sections and divide and conquer, it wasn't until we developed a problem statement that our research turned less cyclical and more purposeful.

We also encountered obstacles in ideation, where we had so much data from our literature review, surveys, and interviews, that we weren't sure what to design for. I remember us considering a safer option, a headphone attachment, in the earlier stages of the project. In an attempt to solve for everything, our creativity and excitement dwindled.

Finally, we asked ourselves, "what sounds the most fun?" We had countless data points, quotes, and behavior statistics to back our designs up. Now it was time to bring the human element, the passion and empathy, back into the project. Asking ourselves this question enabled us to ideate without constraints, iterate quickly, empathize with our users, and most importantly, have fun.

With more time, I believe it would be beneficial to explore the Community tab in more depth. Considering a discovery feature for smaller creators to attract users to their presets, handling the notion of unfair gaming advantages with sound, and how to make this solution scalable for hundreds of thousands of players are important considerations for next steps.