1. COMBATING RESISTANCE TO INTERFACE CHANGES IS NOT AN
INSURMOUNTABLE TASK, BUT IT REQUIRES CHANGING USER
PSYCHOLOGY TO HAVE CONFIDENCE IN THE NEW ADVANCES
Evgeny
Abstract: Slight changes in programs can easily scare away current members. One day we pulled the plug on
our outdated Subscription Center website, and moved a huge army of users to a single access program named
Zapuskatr. Despite the obvious advantages, Zapuskatr was given a cold reception; 93% of users demanded to
return to the previous system. Although we were discouraged, the experience was an eye-opener and revealed
our flawed strategy planning and lack of knowledge about our users. As a result, we implemented the transition
for our newest site in phases. It took shape when we executed a series of incremental measures to minimize the
impact of transferring all our players to the current platform – 4game. Creating a test production site is essential.
Adding new functionality and warning users of pending changes in advance ensures a smoother transition.
Analyzing the data from user feedback in tools like UserVoice allows you to make design updates in the new
project. They can be monitored by conducting usability testing. These are just a few strategies that need to be
taken into account when making major interface changes.
SOFT TRANSITION
I worked for Innova Systems as Test Manager about 6
years. During my work i had an exclusive experience
in complex projects in the telecommunication and
online entertainment industries.
My former company localizes and publishes huge
online multiplayer games.
Innova Systems has an impressive track record
with online games, and they have done excellent
publishing and localization work on some great games
like Lineage 2, Aion,Point Blank, etc.
Up until 2010 our users accessed Subscription
Center (website) to service their needs (adding money
to account, creating a new one, buying subscription,
etc.) and every game had a launcher and required a
separate password. However the growing number of
games and passwords accordingly soon made using the
center an unnecessary hassle for customers while
creating serious support and maintenance issues for us.
Then one day three months later we pulled the
plug on the limited and outdated Subscription Center
and moved a huge army of users away from the stress
of entering an endless row of passwords to a single
access program named Zapuskator all at once. Despite
the obvious advantages Zapuskator was given a cold
reception with 93% of users demanding to get them
back to the previous system.
Though we were discouraged by such whiplash
reaction the experience was an eye-opener and
revealed flawed strategy planning and an appalling
lack of knowledge of how user works.
Also we didn’t take into consideration such a
phenomenon as “Baby Duck Syndrome”. In human–
computer interaction, baby duck syndrome denotes
the tendency for computer users to “imprint” on the
first system they learn, then judge other systems by
their similarity to that first system. The result is that
“users generally prefer systems similar to those
they learned on and dislike unfamiliar systems.”
The issue may present itself relatively early in a
computer user’s experience, and has been observed
to impede education of students in new software
systems.
From the outset we looked to make games
accessible to users from anywhere and obviously
browsers with their plugins and extensions came on
as obvious solution. We set our sights on providing a
single interface for games and access to their
installation, updates and launch straight from browser.
At the time a few Korean games provided web browser
based launch but getting them to install, update and
launch was stepping into a world completely foreign
to us. We eagerly took the plunge. 3 years after
releasing of Zapuskator we decided to attempt
migrating our users to the new online web platform
“4game”. In which user can install, update, launch
huge multiplayer online games directly from the
website. We had to repeat transferring a huge army of
our users to the “4game” platform.

2. 172 Journal of Software Project Management and Quality Assurance
A decision was made to make any transition to a
new system as smooth and seamless for our global
audience as possible. Soft transition took shape as a
series of incremental measures to minimize the impact
of transferring all our players to a new platform –
4game:
1. We set up a User Research Lab and made a call
for all who might be interested in sampling the
platform. We watched, analyzed and dissected
users’ reactions as they pointed out the cracks
and bumps for us to iron out. We rolled our
sleeves and…listened. A lot. You could hear a
pin drop actually when there was someone
sitting in front of the monitor.
2. Raising awareness. We worked intensely to put
the word out across all fronts – social
networks, forums, by word of mouth. To
collect feedback and fix bugs online, we used
a ticketing system UserVoice. By autumn after
a few intense months and all kinds of tweaks
we had a stable version of our platform, along
with some clarity of where we are going with
it. It was time to introduce a multimillion
horde of players to an uncharted terrain. We
were pumped and nearly giddy.
3. Additional functionality that was overlooked
previously. In order to cushion the impact of
the transfer we decided to placate users by
implementing the features that were
overlooked in the previous program. We
wanted to beef up 4game with multiple
accounts, leaderboards or some kind of
achievement support, ubersecurity and a slew
of other features. Some of them panned out,
some didn’t.
4. A dedicated group of volunteers. We assembled
a group of external volunteers who worked on
testing the application and new services with
fervor and dedication and let us leverage an
incredible amount of valuable feedback. Every
new version of the application that came up
was first tested by in-house testers, then by
outside testers and only after official version
got its upgrade. Volunteer testers and users
made it possible for a stable and user
contributed feature-packed version.
5. Notifying users of the coming changes on key
information resources. In addition to covering
forums and social networks we set up a Move
to 4game Notification system that appeared
every time a user launched the old program
and became more frequent as 4game got closer
to the launch. If the user agreed to move from
the previous program this program would
install our new application with the previous
one automatically uninstalling itself. We also
set up https://ru.4game.com/try/ website to pitch
the advantages of the new platform. We sent
the corresponding message to our mailing lists
putting the link to the site.
6. Usability testing. This resulted in an entire
revamp of the Play page. And the prototype
we built could just as well be tossed out the
window. Skip ahead to read more.
7. A promotional video with voiceover by Kuraj
Bambey. Our previous promo was lackluster
and dry to say the least so we hired a studio
that gained tremendous popularity in Russia
with its tongue-in-cheek voiceover for Big
Bang Theory sitcom. They nailed it down with
the promotional video too.
The smooth transition took us about 4 months. The
results of the poll conducted on Vkontakte showed that
that the changes were well received by 50% of users,
30% of users were neutral and 20% looked at them
unfavorably. We were happy with such performance
as you usually get the reverse picture when it comes
to accommodating users to dramatic changes.
The transfer to 4game allowed our players to enter
a game in a couple of clicks, follow the news on the
website, share and comment on them and at the same
time launch a game without the hassle of switching to
anywhere.
After the smooth transition was in place we
worked feverishly to cushion and minimize the impact
by fixing bugs, twittering and patiently taking up any
concerns that users ranted on forums. But there is no
doubt that the effort expended paid off tremendously.
4game runs smoothly through a plugin and
WebSockets and supports all popular browsers.
FOCUS TESTING
One of Innova’s philosophical tenets is to avoid any
decisions based on assumptions, gut feelings or
speculations. Focus testing was a learning curve and
one of the key experiences that led to a shift in our
approaches to user-centric design and is now a
standard part of the development process.
Before the testing a crude prototype was whipped
up to envision an icon, video and quite a lengthy
description for every game on the Play page. A
usability lab was rigged up in a meeting room. The
testing showed that no one needs any icons and no
one reads the text that accompanies these icons, there
were conflicted responses with regard to the video. Not
any of our original ideas was cutting it. We had to
regroup. We cut and chopped at descriptions, replaced

3. Combating Resistance to Interface changes is Not an Insurmountable Task, but it Requires... 173
icons with game logos and put it all up on a tile
interface. The video now lasts no more than five
seconds and is played when you swipe the tile. Some
of our volunteers reported they were somewhat
startled by the suddenness of the video teaser but we
decided that the freshness and novelty of this
experience was worth the risk of discomforting a few
players. This type of response was usually knee-jerk
and the player would want to trigger the video as the
initial unnerving perception quickly dissipated.
The work of the volunteers for 4game is really hard
to overestimate. Based on their generous and rapid
input the interface now communicates with users
rather than instructs them to do things. And the video
just makes it plain fun to interact with over and over
again. Looking forward we will do more focus testing.
But the bigger challenge remains: how to keep the
majority satisfied without overlooking the minority so
that every player could get more out of the site,
whether it’s achievement support, interaction with
other players or stunning visual esthetics of Lineage
2. Right now we are still struggling to figure out a
magic formula that will allow us to gauge and reconcile
the preferences of everyone who comes to our site.
WHAT WENT WRONG
A grueling testing crunch
As we were nearing the launch date a decision was
made to test the water by bringing it first to our
European audience. Russian audience, being a
disproportionately larger army would be too much of
a risk so we tentatively went with a smaller sample. It
turned out quite a sensible decision. We had had some
short staggered crunches before but this one was the
longest and hardest to take mainly because it hit us so
unexpectedly. When we were ready to pat ourselves
on the back for a job well done and pop the cork of a
magnum of champagne we saw nearly every part of
the system falling apart. Integration of the website with
the application staggered, the Play button would
stubbornly disappear due to glitches in the client
architecture, page load and billing system problems,
strayed mark-up for certain pages, gapes and holes in
integration with social networks and funny
registration/login performance all piled up in an
instant, to name a few.
In hindsight I believe that lack of careful planning
from the beginning and technical oversights were one
of the culprits that ran us into a grueling three-month
crunch period. It took a toll on the testing people and
probably their constitutions as the guys had to pull
intense all-nighters just to wake up the next morning
to a plethora of bugs cropping up unexpectedly in
other places. We were hard pressed to hit the deadline
and that coupled with fatigue translated into more
bugs showing up. We called daily meetings where we
would constantly question if we had the best way of
attacking bugs going for us and put up a bug fix chart
that reflected our progress every few hours. Bug lists
were regularly distributed to every member of the
team to keep everyone in sync.
The crunch made us re-evaluate our approaches
and adjust our processes by adopting unit testing and
Test Driven Development (TDD) techniques into the
process. Writing automated tests for the code through
TDD is time consuming but helpful in tracking bugs
in advance. We use automated tests to reproduce bugs.
We do experience occasional crunches since but we are
now better-equipped to handle them.
Flubbing achievement support
Unlike the previous one this is probably the biggest
regret that still gnaws at my bones. Initially this was
huge on the list of features we promised as part of our
strategy to soften impact for our audience transferring
them from Zapuskator to 4game. We had to drop
leaderboard support implementation simply because
of time. It would have considerably thrown us off the
schedule when we already had a huge backlog and
were stretched thin.
We didn’t want the transition to 4game feel forced
and imposed upon player and developed a simple and
logical approach to reach this goal. We wanted to
compel users to transfer to 4game of their own volition.
And we intended to go about that by delivering
compelling features that were previously unavailable
but could be taken advantage of on 4game. Surely the
development of a global leaderboard or achievement
system would have held us back by a couple of months
but the tradeoff would have offset that in spades and
made for even softer transition eventually attracting a
considerably bigger number of new players. Not to
mention that moving up a global leaderboard provides
much more satisfaction and value for player than
reporting score on Facebook or Twitter. Leaderboards
are great because they directly fuel the pizazz of gamer
experience. Despite this faux pas my resolve to add a
leaderboard has only solidified and we are currently
working feverishly to put out this feature in the near
future.
CONCLUSION
We launched 4game by the New Year holidays of 2013.
We were celebrating it by going on a hard gleeful
rampage but we ran into all kinds of snags you could
expect when closing down, including a three-month
testing crunch. And when the team met for the first

4. 174 Journal of Software Project Management and Quality Assurance
time in the new year everyone instantly fell back into
the working groove.
As a result, thanks to a dense work with users,
creating a testing production site, an active work of
external testers, conducting usability testing, and a
smooth strategy of transferring of users, we achieved
amazing results and have been able to overcome the
notorious “baby duck syndrome”!