_Many game studios made pushes into the field of accessibility and the appeal of accessibility in games is growing ever more.
_For example, back then NAUGHTY DOG made UNCHARTED 4 and supplied it with options for motor impairments, and in 2020 they released THE LAST OF US: PT.2 and with their enormous advancements in inclusion they won the award for best innovation in accessibility. There is considerable work done in the various fields of the elimination of different barriers are getting explored one after the other. Back in 2018 we mostly talked about text customization, now we’re at full-blown shader alteration by AAA-titles.
_Mark Brown does a big analysis of each year game releases and examines them in all regards of accessibility and highlights their several achievements.
As the glossary in my last blog entry shows very well, there are already existing concepts which cover topics that I planned to bring in the context of UX and its establishment during my research. So, in upcoming blog entries, I’ll take a closer look at the following terms: Universal Design, Inclusive Design, Accessibility, Green UX, UX Metrics and everything I’ll come across within this research that turns out to be central for my research topic.
This Blog entry will cover universal design, its 7 principles and its (socio-) ecological impact.
“The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect.“
— Tim Berners-Lee
Universal Design has its origins in architecture and it is seen variously as a design approach, a process, a paradigm, or as a design attitude leading to a design strategy. This strategy overall aims to create environments that can be used by everyone to the greatest extent possible. Universal design is based on the idea that a design which meets the needs of excluded groups, such as the elderly, children or persons with disabilities, will also improve the product experience of a broad range of social groups.
While universal design is often mentioned along with related concepts like accessibility and inclusive design, it can be distinguished by its goal of creating a single design solution that can serve as large a diversity of users as possible.
Universal design is not only a theoretical concept, there is a guidance within 7 principles, how a designer can achieve universality in design.
7 Principles of Universal Design
The 7 Principles of Universal Design were developed in 1997 by a working group of architects, product designers, engineers, and environmental designers led by the late Ronald Mace at North Carolina State University. According to the Center for Universal Design at NCSU, the principles “can be applied to evaluate existing designs, guide the design process, and educate both designers and consumers about the characteristics of more usable products and environments.”
Principle 1: Equitable Use
The design is useful and marketable to people with diverse abilities.
Principle 2: Flexibility in Use
The design accommodates a wide range of individual preferences and abilities.
Principle 3: Simple and Intuitive Use
Use of the design is easy to understand, regardless of the user’s experience, knowledge, language skills, or current concentration level.
Principle 4: Perceptible Information
The design communicates necessary information effectively to the user, regardless of ambient conditions or the user’s sensory abilities.
Principle 5: Tolerance for Error
The design minimizes hazards and the adverse consequences of accidental or unintended actions.
Principle 6: Low Physical Effort
The design can be used efficiently, comfortably and with a minimum of fatigue.
Principle 7: Size and Space for Approach and Use
Appropriate size and space is provided for approach, reach, manipulation, and use regardless of user’s body size, posture, or mobility.
“Experiences that hit all levels put users in a state of flow, or total immersion into their task. This is called deep pleasure.”
— Mimi Yu
Moreover, the research gave me some examples where universal design implies added value for ecology and socio-ecology. In the article „Designing for the future? Integrating energy efficiency and universal design in Belgian passive houses“ by Ermal Kapedani it was said that energy efficiency (EE) and universal design (UD) are two important fields addressing parts of the environmental and social pillars of sustainability.
Another article examined whether universal design combined with a socioecological approach improves measured accessibility compared to existing fitness facilities. It was shown that universal design coupled with a social ecological approach improves accessibility in fitness facilities and results in a reasonable payback time. It led to higher scores than comparison facilities and excess revenue exceeded the extra cost of accessibility enhancements. Therefore, Universal Design combined with a socio-ecological approach leads to successful results.
Japan
Japan is well known for a very well implemented universal design approach and acts as a model country in regards to providing accessibility. Japan has built efficiency into the experience, removing friction and guiding you through a range of services from renting an apartment to taking out the rubbish. Train stations are one of the best examples of universal design and equitable use, allowing a wide range of people to access the station.
Ontology is a anthropological/philosophical discipline that refers to the subject of existence. It’s about how we perceive the world, we classify it, we act in it.
Philippe Descola is a French anthropologist that has dedicated his research to nature ontologies across cultures. His idea is that the concept of “nature” doesn’t exists and is just a social production centered on human point of view. The belief of the existence of nature is to say that some entities exists thanks to something that is not human willingness. Very typical of occidental cosmologies, naturalism makes us thinks that nothing happens without a cause. That way, naturalism is so implemented in our ways of thinking that it determines our points of view and our view on others and world.
But naturalism is not the only way to perceive nature. In the book Par-delà nature et culture1 (Beyond nature and culture), Descola identifies four different ontologies: totemism, animism, analogism, and naturalism. He classifies them considering the continuity of two parameters :
interiority : do objects have intentions, a purpose, like me ?
physicality : do those objects share the same physical properties as me ?
Totemism believes in a similarity of the physicality and of the interiority. It gathered humans and non-humans into categories depending on certain physical or psychological attributes. For example the Australian aboriginal people all have a totem. You are not called by your name, but by the totem like Mr Kangaroo, Mrs Ignam and so on. A totem can also represent a clan, a generation. It means you share some attributes with this totem and then you are connected by physicality and interiority.
Animism see a discontinuity of the physicality but a continuity of the interiority. In other words, what can make a difference between humans and non-humans is just the skin. Going beyond the physical differences, animals and plants have the same soul and purposes as humans. You can interact with the same as you do with other people. For example, some aboriginal people of the Amazonian Forest discuss every morning the dreams they had in the night. In those dreams, plants and animals are taking a human appearance and speak human language to deliver messages.
Analogism says that physicality is different, either interiority. Here, the world is divided in a myriad of different individualities, all physically different (not the same kind of life) and in their interiority too (not the same purposes). It is the way of thinking of Aztec and Incas people, or of the Chinese civilization. The world is composed of an infinity of hierarchic relationships between every living beings. It is often related to the polytheists religions that give different attributes to gods.
Naturalism is the way all occidental have been raised. Here, we put a bareer between us humans and whatever else we consider as nature. Despite that we have the same physicality, we don’t have the same interiority. We share the same physiological properties, but we have completely different purposes in life. Because this way of thinking is so widespread in our culture, it’s nearly impossible for us to understand other ways of thinking and to have the feeling that we are part of the nature. Besides, the word “nature” can only be found in occidental languages, you don’t have it the Japanese or Chinese civilizations.
Naturalism led to the separation of nature and culture and is the direct source of all our actions concerning nature. For centuries we’ve been told that it was different from us. Is it even possible nowadays to think out of the naturalist prism ?
Sources :
Descola Philippe, Par-delà nature et culture, 2005
_On December 10th THE GAME AWARDS for the year 2021 took place in LA, where great games get acknowledged and, stating the obvious, awards. Also is this an event for game developtent companies to present their new projects to the whole world.
_Since 2020 there is an award in place for “Best Innovation in Accessibility”, which recognizes debvelopers that are pushing the medium forward by adding features, technologies and content to help games to be played by an even greater audience. Last year, this award was given to NAUGHTY DOG STUDIOS for their immense dedication to publish the most accessible game n a long time: THE LAST OF US PART II. This year, THE GAME AWARDS made the extra effort to make their show more accessible, including an audio-descriptive stream, an ASL (American Sign Language) stream and closed captions. Even on site one could see ASL interpreters standing in front of the stage, bringing ASL to the audience. The award itself was presented by Morgan Baker (Accessibility specialist and designer; also judge in this category) and Jacksepticeye (webvideo producer).
Games are for everyone.
They stated that it’s about honoring people, who work as hard as possible to share their work with as many people as possible by discovering new and creative methods to encourage inclusion. This year’s nominees were:
Far Cry 6 (UBISOFT)
Forza Horizon 5 (PLAYGROUND GAMES)
MARVEL’s Guardians of the Galaxy (SQUARE ENIX)
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart (SONY)
The Vale: Shadow of the Crown (FALLING SQUIRREL)
_Quick Summaries on what each nominee accomplished with accessibility options in their games:
Far Cry 6. This shooter is a quite unexpected newcomer in accessibility, with a wide variety of color customizations for different aspects of the game, like enemy laser pointers, to see where they are going to fire. Also closed captions, a colorblind mode, and texts to speech options.
Forza Horizon 5. The option to enable a in game sign language interpreter was added to this new racing game, besides of many other accessibility customizations.
MARVEL’s Guardians of the Galaxy. Various settings to alter gameplay and certain aspects of it, like changing received damage, ammunition costs, timers, and cooldowns.
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. Options to customize the visual appearance of the game, like depth of field, screen shake, colors, high contrast outlines and more.
The Vale: Shadow of the Crown. A very interesting nominee; a game solely and entirely told through audio and almost no graphics with a focus on narrative and storytelling – perfectly designed to be accessible for blind and low-vision players.
_The winner for best Innovation in Accessibility this year was Forza Horizon 5 (also Best Audio Design & Best Sports/Racing Game) made by PLAYGROUND GAMES. They stated, that their team were so committed to accessibility, so they made it to one of their core pillars of game design in this project. According to them, there is a billion players with some sort of disability which makes gaming a challenge for them – they are happy to be creators who can add options and features which open the ‘magic’ of video games to more and more players.
To win the @TheGameAwards award for Innovation in Accessibility for #ForzaHorizon5 is incredibly meaningful to us, and we hope to continue the important work of making Forza for everyone!
_Immediately after watching this award category and its winner I pondered, what are the exact benefits of ASL as opposed to subtitles? Apparently, ASL – provided by a skilled interpreter – makes it easier for sign language users to keep track of the conversation, who is currently speaking; by taking on the certain aspects of the speaking character. This is achieved through the fact that ASL works completely differently as language, with a different grammar, syntax, and stylistic nuances. Also, subtitles rarely indicate music, sound effects or the atmosphere of the situation. In conclusion, ASL in conjunction with subtitles can greatly enhance the experience of games for people with hearing disabilities.
Hello again. The first blog entry was meant to be like a kick-off entry/overview for the process of research within this project. It consists of information, assumptions, opinions and perceptions. To answer the questions I asked myself i have to close some knowledge gaps before. It will be important during my research to recheck these assumptions and to find a best solution approach within my topic.
Before I follow up on the content and questions from the first entry, I would like to clarify and define terminologies I will work with. Therefore this blog entry is used as a small glossary for UX related terms I came across within my research already and which I will update continuously in course of my further research. Additionally the glossary should help me in my research to follow a clear direction and to avoid misconceptions.
There we go:
A
++ A/B Testing
A/B testing is the comparison of two designs against each other to determine which performs better.
++ Accessibility
The practice of designing experiences for people who experience disabilities. Those with difficulty with any of the five senses of sight, hearing, smell, touch or taste may be benefitted by using products and services that have been designed with accessibility in mind.
++ Agile UX
Agile UX adds UX design and research methods to the agile methodology. The most important driver for Agile UX is the close cooperation between developers, UX designers and UX researchers during the entire process of product development. Ideally, every sprint entails a design and/or research goal. By planning, testing, optimizing and re-testing elements throughout the project, the UX team is able to roll out a final product that has already been validated by their target users.
B
C
++Corporate Identity (CI)
The corporate identity concept can be seen as a strategic concept for positioning the identity of a company and defining a clear uniform self-image, both within the company and in the corporate environment. By developing a clear “we-awareness”, the corporate identity concept is intended to establish a corporate culture internally as a network of lived behavioral patterns and norms. Decisions are made on the basis of a uniform corporate image or identity and corporate mission statement. This enables a significantly higher compatibility and synergy of corporate activities and releases considerable motivation potential through identification with the company and its policies.
++ Cognitive Biases
Cognitive biases are errors in reasoning, memory or other cognitive processes that result from holding onto existing beliefs regardless of contrary information. There are more than 100 documented cognitive biases, commonly categorized in four categories: biases that arise from too much information, not enough meaning, the need to act quickly, and the limits of memory. Cognitive biases are particularly important to be aware of while conducting research, as a way of arriving at truer findings instead of relying on personal preferences. Example: Designer Bob loves minimalist design, and exhibits confirmation bias when he decides to approach his new UI project with an ultra-minimalist approach.
++ Customer Experience (CX)
CX refers to all the different interactions a user has with a brand through its different channels and products, and how a user feels about them. It has a profound impact on brand trust.
++ Customer Journey Map
User journey maps depict an entire process that a hypothetical user can go through. From the information process, to the booking process, to the purchasing process. This mapping goes far beyond a single product or service. It also considers everything that lies outside of individual touchpoints (such as a website).
Customer journey maps visualize how users would achieve their goals and complete tasks. Ideally, research should show the pain points and customer needs within this map. Journey maps are often presented as timelines to demonstrate interaction points covering the beginning, middle and end of an experience.
D
++ Design Thinking
Design thinking is a non-linear, iterative process that teams use to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems and create innovative solutions to prototype and test. Involving five phases—Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test—it is most useful to tackle problems that are ill-defined or unknown.
++ Discursive Design
Discursive Design is about exploring how design can be used for good-, prompting self-reflection, igniting the imagination, and affecting positive social change. Discursive design (derived from “discourse”) targets the intellect, prompting self-reflection and igniting the imagination and expands the boundaries of how we can use design; how objects are, in effect, good(s) for thinking.
E
F
G
H
I
++ Inclusive Design
The British Standards Institute (2005) defines inclusive design as: ‘The design of mainstream products and/or services that are accessible to, and usable by, as many people as reasonably possible … without the need for special adaptation or specialized design. Inclusive design does not suggest that it is always possible (or appropriate) to design one product to address the needs of the entire population. Instead, inclusive design guides an appropriate design response to diversity in the population through: Developing a family of products and derivatives to provide the best possible coverage of the population. Ensuring that each individual product has clear and distinct target users. Reducing the level of ability required to use each product, in order to improve the user experience for a broad range of customers, in a variety of situations.
J
K
++ (UX) KPIs
In business administration, the term “key performance indicators” is generally used to refer to the success, performance or capacity utilization of a company, its individual organizational units or a machine. UX KPIs are key performance indicators that can be used to manage and coordinate UX in companies. They are intended to help integrate UX into the company and increase the UX maturity level.
L
M
++ Mental Model
A user’s mental model is a conceptualization or internal explanation each user has built about how a particular system works. As Norman says (1990), it is a natural human response to an unfamiliar situation to begin building an explanatory model a piece at a time. We look for cause-and-effect relationships and form theories to explain what we observe and why, which then helps guide our behavior and actions in task performance.
According to Norman, each user’s mental model refers to a product of many different inputs. Two core variables are “knowledge in the head” and “knowledge in the world”. Knowledge in the head comes from mental models of other systems, user expertise, and past experience. Knowledge in the world comes from other users, the work context, common cultural conventions, documentation, and the conceptual design of the system itself.
N
O
P
++ Persona
A persona is a fictional representations of a user group you’re designing for. Personas help stakeholders understand who you have in mind when you make design decisions, and act as a reminder to teams that “You are not your user.” Contrary to popular belief, personas are not to be taken as one actual person, but rather as a mix representing a group of users with similar behaviors and mental models. Personas are often created early in the design process so the designer knows who it is designed for.
Q
R
++Return On Investment
A measure for evaluating business performance. In traditional finance, ROI is the most common “profitability ratio” most often calculated by dividing net profit by total assets. The general idea of ROI helps product teams evaluate whether certain efforts are worth pursuing.
S
T
U
++ User-Centered Design
An approach for designing a product or service (user interface design), in which the end user is in the center of the process.
++ Universal Design
Universal Design is the design and composition of an environment so that it can be accessed, understood and used to the greatest extent possible by all people regardless of their age, size, ability or disability. An environment (or any building, product, or service in that environment) should be designed to meet the needs of all people who wish to use it. This is not a special requirement, for the benefit of only a minority of the population. It is a fundamental condition of good design. If an environment is accessible, usable, convenient and a pleasure to use, everyone benefits. By considering diverse needs and abilities of all throughout the design process, universal design creates products, services and environments that meet peoples’ needs. There are 7 principles universal design follows.
++ Usability
Usability is a measure of how well a specific user in a specific context can use a product/design to achieve a defined goal effectively, efficiently and satisfactorily. Designers usually measure a design’s usability throughout the development process—from wireframes to the final deliverable—to ensure maximum usability.
++ Usability Testing
Usability testing is the act of evaluating products or services by testing them with users. During usability tests, researchers observe participants who attempt to complete tasks. The goal is to identify usability problems, collect qualitative and quantitative data and determine participants’ reactions to an experience.
++ User Interface (UI)
UI is the medium through which users interact with an experience, product or device. Your mobile screen, the automated checkout kiosks at grocery stories, the keyboard on your laptop and the way Alexa responds to your voice are all examples of user interfaces.
++User Journey
The path(s) that users take to complete tasks or achieve their goals. From the perspective of analytics software like Google Analytics, journey maps visualize “a person’s experience during one session of using a website or application, consisting of the series of actions performed to achieve a particular goal.”
++ UX Analytics
UX Analytics are important for knowing how User Experiences are going. There are different tools to obtain analytics metrics. While companies used to run focus groups, client interviews and in-lab studies, today the right testing software enables organizations to conduct user research online to scale and quantify results continuously.
++ UX Design (UXD)
UXD is the practice of affecting the user experience through a user-centered design process, with a focus on usability and making user interfaces easy to understand. User experience design is a broad field containing many subfields like information architecture, research, UI design and more. Contrary to popular belief, user experiences designers cannot design all the possibilities of an end-user’s experience (too subjective and vast), but these professionals can apply a design process to help users complete the most important actions.
++ User Experience
User Experience (UX) is everything that happens to a user while interacting with a product, service or general experience. This includes the person’s emotions, attitudes, reactions and behavior during the experience. As a design field, UXBeginner defines user experience at three levels: Level 1 (broadest): the general experience anyone can have with a product or service. Level 2 (as philosophy): Placing the user – and their experience – as the priority and origin of truth for product design. Level 3 (as a way of doing things): UX leverages design thinking, processes, tools and techniques (wireframes, sitemaps) in order to create and affect the user’s experience.
V
W
X
Y
Z
Sources: https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/computer-science/user-mental-model https://careerfoundry.com/en/blog/ux-design/ux-design-glossary/ https://uxmastery.com/resources/glossary/ https://www.uxbeginner.com/glossary/ https://djangostars.com/blog/ui-ux-terms-everyone-should-know/ https://medium.com/@workatplay/the-persona-is-past-its-prime-meet-the-mental-model-a41ac415906d Interface Design : Usability, User Experience und Accessibility im Web gestalten http://www.inclusivedesigntoolkit.com/whatis/whatis.html https://wirtschaftslexikon.gabler.de/definition/key-performance-indicator-kpi-52670
_Hands-on experience with DEATH STRANDING by SONY and Kojima Productions. This game is a beautifully crafted dark apocalyptic sci-fi game with an enigmatic story, a masterpiece in convoluted narrative, futuristic designs and rather complex systems and even more complex UIs.
_Last year I played the ‘base version’ – the PS4 edition – quite a lot and found my way around the complex systems after a while. I learned how the different features work and how to use them properly; and even how to exploit them as much as possible to make my life easier with this game. But there were many things which annoyed me, like non scalable text size which made me often scooch even closer on the couch to my rather big screen, only to read some menu texts. So even for me, it wasn’t satisfying from the beginning and now, almost more than a year later, the “Directors Cut” for PS5 got released – rumor has it, this version is now more accessible. So, I tried the new version of the game after a yearlong break on a PS5 and immediately notices many improvements, mainly quality-of-life improvements. Now the question came up, how good were those improvements really? For a start, I researched some accessibility reviews on DEATH STRANDING and gathered their findings.
_The 1st review was made by Steve Saylor, a blind gamer – his general thoughts and opinions on the accessibility of this game were very intriguing. The crazy and wild story did really impress him, yet did he feel held back by the limitations of accessibility. He tested the PS5 version, where they implanted a “large text” option to enlarge the text size in the whole UI – whereas text in the base PS4 version initially was considered rather small. But even with this new option, often it seems hard to tell where large text was applied, and small text remains. Paired with that, the game has a lot of Button prompts, menus, button maps and texts which take up a lot of the screen, making it rather crowded. To identify everything correctly, one is required to lean back and forth to the screen – which is tiresome.
Staying with visual barriers, subtitles exist through the whole game; yet they do not have any high contrast or background to them – no further settings except on/off. But weirdly enough, in some situations – like any open menu – where there is dialogue experienced, the subtitles get a nice black gradient as background, but only there. Besides that, hearing impaired people might also find difficulties: there is no menu narration, but there are audio feedback/cues, that play on selecting inputs. The two main accessibility barriers he identified were for people with motor or cognitive disabilities. Starting with the latter; in the game there are a lot of different subsystems, which require you to memorize complex input patterns and often it’s hard to determine, what the most important information on the screen is right now – or what is just eye candy. There are subtle visual cues to those vital elements, but often you are left with a ‘lost’ feeling in all these menus.
The lack of any in-game remapping of controls (PS5 version) comes to play at one of the core aspects of the game: while you deliver your items/cargo you will cross different types of terrain (water, rocks, mud, snow…) and for that you to balance your cargo. This is done by ‘ready yourself’ – pressing down left & right shoulder trigger – to prevent yourself from toppling over. The need to push them down constantly to stay upright might be a barrier for some people with motor disabilities. The adaptive triggers of the Dualsense controller do feel nice, but even without any dexterity problems it can get annoying and exhausting, because you will press the shoulder triggers a lot – fortunately you can disable the adaptive feedback. Later in the game you do get access to vehicles, which will help you with that, but it will take some time and exhaustion to get to that point. But that being said, these helping game features possess a durability system and do have to be maintained to work properly.
Buttons in DEATH STRANDING do have many different functions, depending on what subsystem you’re in. A good example would be the item “Repairspray”, which is used to repair worn out cargo containers. To use this item, you will have to:
Press the D-Pad right and hold it, that opens the item wheel
Select with your right analog stick the item
If it’s not on the first page of items, press the right analog stick to switch pages (often referred as R3)
Let go of the D-Pad, item is now equipped
Press left shoulder trigger (L2) to ready it (it now points forward)
Press square to point it backwards to your cargo mounted on your backpack
Press right shoulder trigger (R2) to activate it (until it runs out of gas)
Now you either but it back with D-Pad right or you hold D-Pad right, access the item again in the item wheel and press circle to drop it
Everything has such complex interactions und requires multiple button presses, even in combat and other stressful situations. His final words were that the “Directors Cut” does have some neat little improvements, but it remains just an upgraded & polished version with minor changes to the PS4 edition. It could be, that for many people the advances made are still too little.
_The 2nd review is by Michael Matlock who also came to mainly the same conclusions. Multiple button presses at once are difficult, and even remapping them within the PS5 integrated system options (which is possible nonetheless) is tiresome and exhausting. An interesting aspect which joined the barriers for people with motor disabilities was the camera: the right stick must be adjusted constantly to look around and an automatic camera would help a great deal; this would center/adjust the camera always behind the player character. It was mentioned that the difficulty setting “Very easy” was overhauled that everyone could beat the game, where penalties for dropping cargo are very small and combat is fairly simple – this would have to be tested, I might add.
Concerning accessibility options, the aim-assist is by default activated (changeable) and there is an option for “Keep balance”-sensitivity, which controls who difficult the balancing part is for the player. Also, there is now a “Hold Button”-option, resulting in overriding any quickly repeated button presses (quick time events) to just holding the button down. The analog sticks have adjustable dead zones, and some motion-based inputs can be remapped to ‘normal’ button presses. The HUD can be adjusted with selecting & deselecting shown icons to reduce visual clutter; and the brightness can be easily adjusted. Another interesting barrier, everything has subtitles – expect the frequent appearing music pieces. Yet not hearing them will not stop you from advancing further in the game, but sadly do they add a lot to the atmosphere of the game.
A big burden is lifted through the rather smart game design – the online component. As one might never meet another player in his own game world, yet these other online players might alter your own game world by leaving objects and structures to help you traverse the world easier – this feature often helps a great deal getting through the game. For example, at one moment you might struggle crossing a river and when you return later someone left you a bridge in the meantime. Final judgement of this review was partially accessible and again, a lot of helpful accessibility options, but still room for a lot of improvements – yet it has gotten substantially better considering earlier Kojima titles.
_3rd review of the game was done by Courtney Craven at CAN I PLAY THAT?: again, iterating many of the given problems. Interesting enough, the ability to plot routes, which will then be visible in the game world as dotted lines was praised as helpful tool while being deservedly difficult to operate (speaking again of multiple button presses). Also, the “very easy”-difficulty could eliminate combat completely, but I doubt stripping away this aspect completely does the game any good, but maybe there could be a workaround by maybe leaving the combat situation in the game yet removing the possibility for a “game over”.
The statement was made, that if you struggle with holding down the triggers, you will not really be able to play DEATH STRANDING – which, given the number of times you will have to press it, is most likely true. Regarding the font sizes, it was mentioned that even the “large text”-option looks like rather ‘normal’ text size. I agree on that; the ‘large’ text was just right for me, yet somebody might need it even bigger – and that’s just not supported. Final words in that review that this game is one of the most barrier-ridden games in a long time but not a complete accessibility failure – although many people might not be able to enjoy this game.
_My own small notes on this game are that I was rather surprised by the given accessibility options, because Japanese productions often suffer from a poor approach to accessibility – maybe it was SONY helping hand – but it was nice to see that there were some ideas, thoughts and time spent on making the game more easily enjoyable for a broader audience. What I still struggle with, which is funny no one mentioned it in my research; the sheer amount and variety of complex, new and unknown icons often leave me pondering, what they want to tell me – although this is for another time.
_On November 11th, the World Usability Day 2021 was also celebrated in Graz with a special online event, dedicated to this very special day. Informative talks, back-to-back were held and one of the speakers was Michaela – aka Ela – Peterhansl an UX Designer at Ubisoft Düsseldorf. Her topic: From Accessibility to Universal Design in the Game Industry.
Our own experience is not everyone else’s experience.
_Accessibility is Usability for all, which means according to Ela, products and services, features and even certain aspects of a product should be useable und enjoyable for everyone. But why is that important? There is a huge list of reasons, why this is such a crucial thing: equity and equality for people with disabilities, innovation & new standards, breaking the cycle of decreased quality of life and many more – only to name a few. But also, is it a legal question; since there are accessibility laws in place with very large fines for compliance failures and subsequent violations, and many more will be introduced. For example, the EU accessibility law is official since 2019 and will be applied by 2025.
_Extended list of examples fpr the importance of accessibility:
Equality and equity for people with disabilities
Break cycle of decreased quality of life
Accessible products/services are beneficial for everyone
Innovation and new standards
If a user’s experience is bad, a design is insufficient
Our interaction experience is going to require accessibility as we age
And many more…
Yet, despite of all the evidence for the importance of accessibility, there seems to be a huge gap in education. But there is no need to wait for this to catch up, one can make awareness and create demand now. For starters, to get into the mindset of accessibility: have an open mind, willingness to learn & unlearn, focus on empathy. But beware: empathy could easily lead to a slippery slope of pity and patronizing users. The biggest temptation to invest into accessibility might be that it’s a direct investment in our own future – our generation is highly tech-dependent, so there will be a high demand for accessible solutions in the future.
The most important key aspect was, that accessibility is a mindset – it doesn’t just ‘happen’. It needs to be brought back into thoughts and decision making at every step of the design process. The reason, why it isn’t already a standard, is because we tend to make unconscious decisions based on our own experience and bias.
The environment we created makes people feel disabled.
Also, the famous bubble – the social factor – plays a big role in our process of designing products. About society and people with disabilities, it’s important to note that the latter is often stereotyped, and many disabilities stay invisible and often go completely overlooked. How a disability looks is a very complex and very much individual question – many people might not even know that they have a disability. Two examples on the topic of inclusion/exclusion were brought up: Molly Burke – a blind influencer – feels in control and comfortable in her house; but as soon she steps out into the world, she loses all that control. This brings us to the question; how many talented people don’t get the opportunity to ever live up to their full potential, because the environment we made doesn’t allow them to do so? Another analogy made by the blind filmmaker, James Rath: just because someone can’t drive a car, it doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to look at cars, like them, go near them, be on the passenger seat or take a cab. The main essence from this is, it’s not about competing, it’s about facilitating fun. Video games have a positive impact on all players; hence they bring an increase of quality of life. For people with disabilities, it’s crucial to have a medium where they comfortable and accomplished with.
A short excursion about universal design, which means it should be usable by all people, with out any adaption or some special addendum. Accessibility though is often seen as something ‘extra’ – a feature to add in hindsight. This approach only leads to adding complexity to an existing non-accessible system. ‘Special’ solutions are further stigmatizing, and it is highly inefficient, ineffective & costly. But not only disabled people profit from accessible solutions – everyone does.
_Final Takeaways form this very informative event, it’s about the first steps in accessibility with lots of useful resources and important mindsets. Rather fitting start for our beginning into this journey – next stop: hands on experience.
In the last post, I gave an overview about the technical aspects of Augmented Reality Storytelling and the three main components of it. In this post, I want to focus more on the story. I want to give an insight into Interactive Storytelling, which can be used with Augmented Reality to create an immersive experience for the user.
Interactive Storytelling
Interactive Stories are stories that can and need to be influenced by the user. Throughout the story, the user needs to make decisions in order to continue. These decisions influence the further course of the story. The user is no longer a passive observer of a linear story, but can be an active part of it.
A interactive story is usually divided in different parts. At the end of a storyline, the user is asked to make a decision, based on different options, which are provided. After making the decision, the user is forwarded to another storyline.
The term is sometimes used synonymously for digital and transmedia storytelling (storytelling through the use of digital media), but this is not always the case. Interactive Storytelling can also be applied in, for example, books. At some point of the story, the reader has to make a decision and has several different choices to choose from. Depending on what decision he/she makes, he/she has to scroll to a certain page where the story continues.
Use of Interactive Storytelling
Interactive Storytelling often finds its usage in marketing. There are several campagnas, which make use of Interactive Storytelling to promote their products. But Interactive Storytelling can also be used to disseminate social and difficult to communicate topics. An example of that is a campaign from “Wiener Linien”, where they created an interactive campaign to educate about civil courage. Another example if from the “International Red Cross”, which made a spot to generate and show awareness of work in crisis areas.
Common Structures
There are several different options to structure an interactive story. These are some of the most common structures:
Branching Narrative
A relatively classic narrative structure in which viewers can make more and more far-reaching decisions about the course of action. The narrative branches into different endings depending on the choices you make. Depending on how many branches the narrative contains, this type of structure can get very complex very quickly.
Fishbone Narrative
This is a traditional linear structure that allows viewers to explore the sub-stories of their story, but keep bringing them back to the main theme of their story. This structure still gives a lot of control over the route viewers take through your project.
Parallel Narrative
With this structure, on the one hand, viewers are offered choices in the story, and on the other hand, they are repeatedly returned to the main theme of the narrative for decisive moments.
Threaded Narrative
The perfect structure to tell a story from multiple angles. Topics can be linked to one another or remain completely separate. Rather, the story consists of a number of different themes that develop largely independently of one another.
Concentric Narrative
In this structure, there are different storylines, which orbits around a shared central point The viewers are provided with different entry points, where they get to choose one. No matter which entry point the viewer choose, in the end they will always return to the core area.
References
Herbst, D.: Storytelling
Markouzis D.; Fesakis, G.: Interactive Storytelling and Mobile Augmented Reality Applications for Learning and Entertainment – A rapid prototyping perspective
Adlmaier-Herbst, D. G.; Musiolik, T. H.: Digital Storytelling als intensives Erlebnis – Wie digitale Medien erlebnisreiche Geschichten in der Unternehmenskommunikation ermöglichen
In my second blog entry, I dive deeper into topic of the technology behind virtual fitting rooms – Augmented Reality. My research should lay the groundwork for understanding how AR works and how it can be used in a fashion context.
And what exactly is Augmented Reality?
Augmented Reality (AR) is available on any camera-equipped device – mostly on smartphone and tablet – and on which the corresponding AR software is installed. AR adds digital content onto a device’s live camera feed, making the digital content seem to be part of the real world. Unlike Virtual Reality (VR), which replaces reality with a completely digital environment, AR enhances the real world by digital information overlay or virtual details, which means the real environment remains central to the user experience.
Widely known and used examples of AR are for instance Pokémon Go and Ikea App. The picture below shows a range of different applications and fields, taking advantage of AR.
But how does AR work?
When a user points the device’s camera at an object, the software recognizes it through computer vision technology, which analyzes the content of the camera feed. The device then downloads information about the recognized object from the cloud and presents the AR information as an object overlay in a 3D experience. The content displayed is part real and part virtual. Computer vision determines an object in terms of semantics (what) and 3D geometry (where). First recognizing an object, then understanding it’s 3D position and orientation. With geometry, it is possible for the rendering module to display the AR content at the right place and angle, which is essential for a realistic AR experience. AR is real-time 3D or in other words it is live, which means the process explained above has to occur every time a new frame comes from the camera (most smartphones today work at 30 fps). As a result, when moving a device, the size and orientation of the augmentation adjusts to the changed context automatically.
Finally: AR & fashion?
Yes – one field of application for AR are virtual try-ons. However, the experience should go beyond the aspect of trying on clothes, and it has to be said that AR cannot yet completely replace a real try-on due to the lack of display quality. The key aspect in such experiences is the part real and part virtual aspect of AR (person = real and garment = virtual).
According to Vogue Business, the “AR clothing try-on is nearly here” and it “is getting closer to reality, and the pace of acceleration is increasing”. Companies and start-ups are working on improving try-on capabilities with updates including 3D body mesh to define 3D shapes, cloth simulation and its behavior more precisely. Since there are many interesting possibilities for in-shop-experience and online-experience, investors and tech companies see a great potential in AR clothing. The value of the technology is extended beyond its entertainment aspect.
In my next blog entry, I will focus more on the benefits of AR clothing and how it could potentially solve current problems concerning the fashion industry with a focus on e-commerce.
Following the discoveries made in the past search phase, it was time to analyse existing exhibits on the basis of the findings.
To facilitate this, work has been carried out over the past few days on the creation of a project database. This has been designed and programmed from scratch, and is not only a great help in keeping the information together, but also shows data taken from the analyses.
The idea is to collect information from different installations and to be able to read details related to usability (UX) aimed at children. For that purpose, certain questions have been determined to answer while analysing projects in order to obtain results that demonstrate, or not, whether the aspects explained in previously reviewed articles are applicable to interactive exhibitions for children.
The questions are:
Which interaction model is used (GUI, TUI, CLI, Other)?
What is the focus of the interaction (user-centered, activity-centered, system design or genius design)?
Does the installation provide instant feedback?
What type of navigation is there (multiple, step-by-step or other)?
Is the text simple and understandable?
Is the text size large?
How much text is there?
Does it have sounds?
Does it have animations?
Does it have bright, contrasting colours?
What kind of icons are displayed (abstract, literal, no icons, other)?
Is the experience customisable (user choice: characters…)?
With the database prepared and programmed, we started to analyse works in order to receive the data. For the moment it only has exhibitions by the Potion Design group, which in many cases directs its works to the very young. Even so, over the next few days we intend to add many more installations to be analysed, in order to have more realistic results.
