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Evaluation of PC game "ECO" 

Overview

This project work was done as a paid contractor working for Strange Loop Games. Report can be viewed on Google Drive. 

Project Goals

Discover areas of general improvement for ECO based on the Norman Nielsen Group Heuristics (NNG) and highlight any source of "clunkiness"  that can be eliminated.  This report was to help the Studio's problem  of players refunding the game on Steam. This evaluation pin-pointed onboarding and early gameplay issues that could be the root problem for this refunding issue.

Process 

I used the NNG heuristic framework to identify standard usability problems that could be aiding in the "clunkiness" of ECO and recorded the findings to present to the dev team to fix.

The evaluation involved playing the game up until the 2 hour mark to be within Steam refund window to experience only the content of the players that had refunded the game.  

Return of Investment 

  • The approach was able to generate 95 actionable improvement points for the devs 

  • Using this approach also gave 3 new insights for improvement that needed more research

  • The whole process took ~3 work days to complete: 

    • ~5 hours total were spent ingame & documenting the findings 

    • ~19 hours total to analyze the findings, write & design the report 

  • This report was used as the foundation / roadmap for further work I did with the studio 

Snippet of the report demonstrating the section ratings

Google Sites - Created by Hayley Durham | 2024

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