Playing User Experience Assessments

Within large companies the user experience (UX) departments and their interaction designers are often not directly integrated into software development teams. Typically there are too few designers that can fully cover all projects. This is challenging as developed products become ill designed, which in turn lowers the quality of use. It would therefore be beneficial if the developers understand and utilize basic design principles when they evaluate product designs (when no designer is available). However, given that user experience design activities are outside the typical software developer scope of work, they are not necessarily committed to do such evaluation activities. The aim of this project is to introduce gamification elements into a tool to support the software developers in evaluating user experience quality without the presence of an interaction designer. We also study how developers within multiple companies use this tool and how well developers retain a user centered focus during the evaluation.

More user experience evaluations are conducted, which in turn increases quality of use. This is critical since user experience has become a main competitive factor. Also, more product development actors are involved and they become further aware of how to increase focus on and utilize interaction design principles.