Background
Joan grew up in Catalonia and has always been passionate about video games. It is when he turned 18 that he decided to specialize into user experience, after learning usability for the first time. He studied game design and development and later specialized in Game User Experience at the Catalan video game university ENTI.
Joan analyzes all the data to create an accurate report of the games of our partners. He’s always researching and looking up for new trends, behaviors, mechanics in video games, to try to understand better what the players expect from a game and how game designers can match their creativity with the expectations of the audience.
What is User Experience?
User Experience (commonly shortened to UX) research is used in a wide range of sectors and activities. In the case of video games, the objective is to explore players’ propensity to interact with the game: propensity to download and buy the game, to continue playing, or to recommend it on online communities and forums. UX is at the heart of playtesting and is its key purpose. In addition to psychology and research methodologies, innovative techniques such as biometric technologies can be used to understand the player’s emotions better. We highlighted its importance previously in this blog article.
"Always think about the final user"
Creating a game is a long process. Joan points out the difficulty of developers to stick to the original line. When designing a video game, you must not forget you are creating a project not for yourself but for the players. Always think about the final user, why he will play your game. Developers must keep in head the objective to manage to create a great gaming experience in order to retain the user and make him come back. User experience analysis is the right tool to discover what the user likes of the video game and what he doesn’t, and redesign some parts according to this information; for instance the game design, the gameplay, or the scenario.
Implement UX into my development processes?
The game will evolve quickly and user experience analytics need to be performed on a regular basis in order to understand your game better. As the game grows, the audience expectations do as well.
Interested to perform user analytics in your company? Reach Joan on LinkedIn or contact us now!
Additional information about Joan:
Gamer level: Hardcore
Favorite video game: Mario Kart [Wii]
Special talent: Can cook 1 minute rice in 58 seconds.
