This document summarizes a presentation about using psychophysiological measures and tools to study user experience in games. It discusses measuring electrodermal activity and facial electromyography to understand arousal and valence. It also explains Csikszentmihalyi's concept of flow and models of flow. Further, it presents biometric storyboards to visualize intended and actual user experience, the Repidly tool for annotating physiological signals, and mixed visualizations of qualitative and quantitative player data. Finally, it provides developer guidelines for applying these techniques.

1. jeux vidéo
Prof. Lennart Nacke
Université de Waterloo
UX&

2. Games User Research,
User Experience, and
Flow
Lennart Nacke, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
CC by Lennart Nacke/Flickr
www.hcigames.com, @acagamic, lennart.nacke@acm.org

3. About me
• Associate Professor
• Director of the HCI Games Group at the University of Waterloo

4. CC by Liz Henry/Flickr
Body Signals

5. Electrodermal Activity
• EDA
• Primary index of arousal
• Increased sweat gland activity
• Sympathetic nervous system

6. Facial Electromyography
• EMG
• Muscle contraction result in electrical activity
• Primary index of hedonic valence
Brow muscle (negative valence)
Periocular muscle (high arousal, positive valence)
Cheek muscle (positive valence)

7. C3 CMS DRLCz C4
F3 F4
FC5
FC1 FC2 FC6
Fz
Pz
Oz
P4
AF4
Fp2
PO4
O2O1
CP2
F8
T8T7
P8
CP6
PO3
P3
P7
CP1
CP5
AF3
F7
Fp1
Chatrian, G. E., Lettich, E., & Nelson, P. L. (1988). Modified nomenclature for the "10%" electrode system. Journal of
Clinical Neurophysiology: Official Publication of the American Electroencephalographic Society, 5(2), 183-186.
Frontal (F)
Parietal (P)
Occipital (O)
Temporal (T)
Central (C)
Odd Numbers Even Numbers
Electroencephalography

8. Psychophysiological
Inference
• Body and Mind Relations
• One-to-one
• One-to-many
• Many-to-one
• Many-to-many
• Null relations
• Measure operation and activity of
• Muscles
• Nerve cells
• Glands

10. Csíkszentmihályi’s Flow
Skills HighLow
High
Low
Challenge
Anxiety
Apathy Boredom
Flow

11. What's Flow?
• Concentration focused on present moment
• Action and consciousness merge
• Self-awareness lost
• Full control over your actions
• Distorted time perception
• The activity is rewarding in itself

12. Synthesis of Flow Models
Model Effectance Identification Transportation
Mental
Workload
Csiksz.
Action
awareness,
control
Self-awareness
lost
Concentration
time distort.
Jones
Clear goals,
feedback,
control
Self-concern
lost
Effortless
involvement
Task
completion,
focused att.
Cowley
Challenge,
control, clear
goals, feedb.
Identity, self-
awareness
weakened
Immersion
Challenge, less
time perception
Sweetser et al
Challenge,
skills, control,
clear goals, fb
Immersion
Concentration
challenge skills

14. Biometric Storyboards
• A single User Experience
(UX) graph
• Intended UX
• Actual UX
• Comparison study
(N=24) of different player
testing approaches
Pejman Mirza-Babaei, Lennart E. Nacke, John Gregory, Nick Collins, and Geraldine Fitzpatrick. 2013. How does it play better?:
exploring user testing and biometric storyboards in games user research. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on
Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '13).ACM, NewYork, NY, USA, 1499-1508. DOI=10.1145/2470654.2466200

15. Repidly
• Online tool to
review experience
• Rapid evaluation
• Annotate videos
and physiological
signals
Bachelor’sThesis project from Mike Schaekermann

16. Repidly
• Easy to associate
game events with
physiological
events
• Rapid annotation
Bachelor’sThesis project from Mike Schaekermann

17. Player Data Visualization
• Mixed visualization of qualitative and quantitative
player data overlaid on top of a level
• The overall hue of the paths conveys areas with
high (B and C) and low (A) player arousal
Pejman Mirza-Babaei, Günter Wallner, Graham McAllister, and Lennart E. Nacke. 2014. Unified visualization of
quantitative and qualitative playtesting data. In CHI '14 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing
Systems (CHI EA '14).ACM, NewYork, NY, USA, 1363-1368. DOI=10.1145/2559206.2581224

18. DEVELOPER GUIDELINES
1. Use visual experience representations whenever
possible.
2. Give players functionality to annotate their own
experience, physiological or otherwise.
3. Set individual threshold markers when trying to track
down emotional moments.
4. Tie player performance to spatial player
information and virtual locations to improve design.

19. DEVELOPER GUIDELINES
5. When researching game flow, simplify the
dimensions to facilitate experience coding.
6. Built tools that provide quick and actionable
insights, do not overemphasize theory.
7. Allow user researchers to drill down deep into
your data at points of particular interest.
8. Facilitate inter-developer collaboration, especially
between games user research and game design.

20. Thank you
Contact me at…
len@uwaterloo.ca
@acagamic (Twitter)
www.hcigames.com
uwaterloo.ca/games-institute/
www.immerse-network.com