User experience blog

“I’m not a gamer”

By Alistair Gray on 16 November 2010

Tags:

I was reading some very interesting survey results by Frank N. Magid Associates on the GamesIndustry.biz website (free subscription required). It found that 2 in 3 of the Americans questioned played computer games, but only a little over 1 in 3 saw themselves as a ‘gamer’.

I thought the results were worth noting for 2 reasons. It demonstrates:

  • The way a question is framed can have a massive effect on the results produced.
  • Many game players don’t see themselves as ‘gamers’.

I was trading interesting iPhone games with a colleague, and was taken aback when they said ‘I’m not a gamer’. They’d just shown me a fighting game approaching the complexity of Tekken. Why did he not see himself as a gamer? I think the confusion comes from people’s definition of the word ‘gamer’ - everyone has a different one. There as about as many definitions as there are gamers out there. I see it as “anyone who plays games”, but Wikipedia (currently) defines ‘gamer’ as:

Historically, the term “gamer” usually referred to someone who played role-playing games and wargames. More recently, the term has grown to include players of video games

Maybe with a definition of the word ‘gamer’ before the question would have helped.

How about you - How do you define ‘gamer’? Do you feel you’re one? Does the definition even matter anymore (now more and more people are picking up Wii remotes, iPhones and more)?

Comments:

5 comments on “I’m not a gamer”

Photo tagging and social media - the future?

By Claire Savage on 15 November 2010

Tags:

Having just purchased a rather nice APPLE Mac to play round with photos and videos, I’m pretty impressed with the face recognition tool in photos.

The photo software supplied allows the user to ‘tag’ photos with names and it will then automatically search for the tagged individual across your entire photo collection, giving you the opportunity to confirm the identity.

Great!! But as with all technology I now expect it everywhere! I want my APPLE to talk to my Facebook profile and integrate the two seamlessly.

Just imagine the future; all the social media applications automatically recognising and tagging faces.  The Face book and Google privacy departments would have a field day collecting and using information about individuals all accidentally (of course).

I can see the headlines now – ‘Caught in the Act!’ - ‘Marriage wrecked by automatic tagging recognition of wife on Face book page’
Combined with the power of geolocation and instant photo tagging…. the mind boggles.

However, there is a limitation with the photo tagging on the MAC.
It does not do pets. At least not yet.

Comments:

Leave a comment on Photo tagging and social media - the future?

Do your shopping from the comfort of your armchair!

By Rhodri Buttrick on 5 November 2010

Tags:

“Do your shopping from the comfort of your armchair!”  This is what we are so often told, as apparently it’s easier!

Apart from the fact that I like going to town, this mantra from the e-commerce age isn’t always true for all of us, all of the time.  Although I am very computer literate (I rely on them for my daily work and organisation), I rarely buy anything through the internet and when I do I tend to ask my parents to do it for me.  It’s all to do with those passwords and favourite questions – one for each site.  The warnings says “Don’t use the same passwords – look after your password – don’t disclose it!”

All very good advice but I simply can’t remember all those passwords and even if I did, I certainly would have trouble with those very long debit card numbers, written in “hard to see” silver on pale backgrounds. Long numbers are dreadful for many dyslexics as they often cannot hold the numbers in their heads long enough to punch them in.  Then there is VeriSign.  This is the banking security “extra”, which asks you for the 3rd, 5th, and 8th letter or digit in your (different) password. It changes which three it asks for each time.

Is writing the password down, then counting off the letters, really such a good idea, especially as I cannot write legibly?  Is this what they meant us to do? Do I then have to keep a shredder on my student desk along with my scanner, printer, speakers, head-set, mouse and lap-top? The problem is, that as time goes on, we are compelled to do more and more through the internet and less and less through real people. The options are closing.

This was a classic example of what was discussed when I spoke in Vienna two years ago at the European Commission’s e-Inclusion conference. You can hear my speech here.  What is easy for some people is hard for others and it is all too easy for designers to forget “the others”.  This is however, one area,  which, if solved, will raise a cheer from all the population!

Photo credit: bsr_dk via Flickr/Creative Commons

Comments:

2 comments on Do your shopping from the comfort of your armchair!

What’s happening at Webcredible

By Trenton Moss on 1 November 2010

Tags:

October was a very exciting month for us as we launched our new logo. It’s been months in development and we’re really happy with it as we feel it’s much clearer and visually more representative of what we do as a company. Read my blog post about our rebrand for more on this.

As well as launching a new logo and brand this month, we had a few other launches:

Ecommerce report
Our 5th annual ecommerce report came out in October, with John Lewis coming top this year. They had a double-victory as they also came top of the charts for the 5 years combined, being the only company to be in the top-5 in each of the past 5 years. Last years winners, Marks & Spencer and WHSmith, dropped down to 3rd and 4th respectively. As usual the report picked up a lot of press coverage.
VoD report
At the start of the month we published another report, analysing 6 broadcaster Video on Demand websites against 10 best practice guidelines. Guidelines included a mixture of essential usability guidelines that apply to any website and those relevant to the key activities site visitors on a VoD website. The BBC iPlayer came top; Sky Player came bottom.
jQuery training
We ran our first jQuery course in October to a sold-out room of developers. The course went really well and we had some great feedback from participants. As with all our training, the jQuery training has a small class size, is highly interactive and is taught by experts.

As if all this wasn’t enough to keep us busy, we exhibited at Ecommerce Expo on 19 & 20 October. The show featured 140 exhibiting companies (including us) plus a comprehensive conference programme. As with all these shows it’s a lot of fun and absolutely exhausting - who’d have thought standing up for a day and talking to people could be such hard work!

Trade show fever seems to have gripped us at Webcredible as we’re also exhibiting at the mediaPro show. It was a really last minute decision to go but we thought we’d give it a go and head on down there. If you’re there then please do swing by stand 96 and say hi to us.

We also made a couple of announcements in October, the first one being that we’re recruiting a Head of Business Development. This is a senior role within the company whereby you’ll proactively generate and close new business leads, contributing significantly to the company growth. If this sounds good to you, or you know anyone that you think would be interested then let us know! CVs should be sent to jobs@webcredible.co.uk.

The second announcement we made this month was to launch our 15th training course, prototype with Axure training. The first Axure course will happen in the new year and we’ve already had a number of people sign up.

So, let’s hope that November isn’t as busy as October or I think I may have a meltdown! As usual, please also vote in our poll (it’ll take you just 5 seconds), this month asking when and how you’ll do most of your Christmas shopping.

Comments:

Leave a comment on What’s happening at Webcredible

A nation’s favourite tops the 5 year charts

By Claire Savage on 28 October 2010

Tags:

Our latest ecommerce report, the 5th in the series shows John Lewis topping the chart and winning our Webcredible Ecommerce Excellence Award due to it’s consistent performance.

The report, clearly shows a mature and well developed sector which is experiencing another surge in growth from mobile and social media channels.

What was surprising was the fact some basic areas for website usability for many retailers still needed to improve. For example, websites fail to track viewed items to help make it easier for visitors to shop online, thereby meaning a loss in potential revenue. In addition to this, most websites lost marks by failing to display a highly visible ‘Proceed to checkout’ button. A new guideline for 2010, this is considered to be an important feature and fairly easy to implement, yet continues to be ignored by seven websites.

The criteria used to evaluate the websites takes into account the complete ecommerce experience, including browsing and navigation, the checkout process, searching and product display pages.

The 20 ecommerce websites received total scores out of 100.

To find out more, listen to our expert panel discussion on the report or view the report.

Comments:

1 comment on A nation’s favourite tops the 5 year charts

 

View top searches