What lessons from fun and engaging video games such as Fortnite can be applied to craft great user experience for any product? This in-depth masterclass proposes to explore the ingredients and science behind the development of successful games, and offers takeaways applicable to any product (including games), service, or system.

Making fun and engaging video games is hard, and with thousands of games being released every year, the competition for game developers is fierce. Although there is no known recipe for crafting successful games, some clear ingredients do exist, which game developers can use to make their own successful recipe. User experience (UX) and cognitive science disciplines combined provide developers with those ingredients --across all types of games, platforms used, or audiences targeted-- to guide them along the development process. Experiencing a game happens in the player's mind. This is why understanding the human brain (especially its limitations) while it is perceiving and interacting with a game is paramount to accomplish faster and more efficiently your developers' goals.

This Masterclass delves into how the human brain works in terms of perception, attention, and memory and offers a concrete UX framework and guidelines that developers can apply during the different development stages. The ultimate goal of this Masterclass is to provide tools to significantly improve the experience of the game you are developing, as perceived by your target audience. This Masterclass will offer numerous examples, from video games and beyond, to illustrate each point.

This Masterclass has a maximum of 12 people

CONTENT

Part 1 - (3 hours) Introduction to cognitive science and psychology to understand how the brain works and, more specifically, how it learns. We will look into the capabilities and limitations of human perception, attention, memory, motivation, and emotion, using multiple examples taken from video games, other software, and everyday life.

- lunch break (PLEASE NOTE LUNCH IS NOT INCLUDED)

Part 2 - (4 hours) Focuses more specifically on the User Experience (UX) framework you can apply when developing your game (or applying game-based design to other products), and how it relates to the brain capabilities and limitations. We will breakdown UX into ‘usability’ and ‘engage-ability’ and detail the important principles within these 2 components that can make, in the end, a great difference for your audience and how they will experience your product (for the better!). It will cover how to successfully onboard players or users (i.e. first time user experience) as well as how to keep players and users engaged over time.

Part 3 (30 min) User research and analytics, and how to measure what when, depending on what stage of development a project is at. This part also touches on UX strategy and how to develop it both at a project and company level.

Anyone can benefit from knowing better about the brain and about user experience. This Masterclass is however tailored more specifically for game developers, and product developers interested in learning how to apply game UX principles and strategy to their project or company.