Similar Products research and Love/break-up Letter

So now that we have some tools at our disposal to understand and analyze games, let us talk about Research as the first stage of the iterative design process. Research is a very important part of the design process - it is what helps us learn about and define the needs of the users which lays the groundwork for then creating solutions to them.

Research also acts as a source of inspiration and helps us gain insights that we did not have previously. Above all, research can be a lot of fun, especially in this branch of design, as it can entail playing a lot of games and taking notes. YES, the most important part is not playing games, it is taking notes and above all formulating a question to be answered in the next phase. I cannot emphasize this enough, the final product of the research should be a question, not notes. It is absolutely crucial and without it, you have just wasted a lot of time.

Pick up your favorite game and analyze a small part of it using the MDA model for example; write down various game elements that you find and then categorize them into mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics and see what that does to your understanding of the game. Feel free to group the similar game elements together to gain a richer understanding of what is leading to your feelings. Think about what kind of fun you are having, and what player types are the main targets of that specific part of the game. Then try to formulate a question - this is usually done by using the phrase “how might we…”; for example if we are researching Rock, Paper, Scissors maybe we can produce a question like “how might we redesign rock, paper, scissors into a perfect information game?” or “how might we redesign rock, paper, scissors to incorporate deeper strategic elements that keep players engaged and challenged over multiple rounds?”

We call this Similar Products research; you pick-up a similar game to that which you want to create and analyze it. After playing enough of it to have an opinion, I want you to either write a love letter, a break-up letter or both to the game you just played. Follow these steps:

1. Each team member writes a handwritten love/break-up letter to the game you want to analyze. Ask the participants to spend no more than 10 minutes on each letter.
2. Gather together with your team, each team member reads their letter out loud. Video record the readings
3. Then you go through the videos and write down what you notice - both in terms of the words that are used, as well as facial expressions and auditory cues that you find in the recordings
4. Discuss your findings - this leads to you empathizing with the users
5. Try to formulate a question to answer based on your findings - use the “how might we…” format

You probably want to save the handwritten letters as design artifacts. Also, you can use this method on your own product and show the video recordings to your stakeholders, or other team-members; this usually leads to interesting conversations on a deeper level.

This method of analysis is a qualitative tool used to gather user feedback and emotional responses to a product or experience. Together, these methods offer a balanced view of user experiences, capturing both positive and negative emotions, which can inform design improvements and strategic decisions