Our survey can be found on Dropbox.
The survey asks questions about our game, and our manual, in attempt to determine the usefulness/accessibility of the manual and also the effectiveness of the game. The data will provide us with an idea of how our usability testing went, understanding what we did right and what we did wrong with regards to both the game and the manual. We will show our survey results in the final write-up and final presentation, probably with a graph of some sort. The survey will be short with only 17 questions, many of which are optional. It should take less than ten minutes to complete. Below we will list the rationale for each of the questions.
- “Did you read the user’s manual?” – A vital question, if they didn’t read our user’s manual then many of our other questions can’t be answered, and we would get no data on this part of our project.
- “On a scale of 1-5, how difficult was it for you to navigate through the user’s manual (5 being most difficult)?” – This question will of course be skipped if the person taking the survey answered “No” to #1. This question is also very important since it addresses the general accessibility of the manual.
- “Did the manual contain all the information you needed about system requirements?” – A simple Yes/No question that will determine whether or not we missed any vital information about this part of the manual.
- “If you answered “No” to question number 3, what didn’t you find in the manual about system requirements?” – A much needed followup to question #3.
- “Did the manual contain all of the information you needed to install the game?” – Like question #3, but addressing another crucial part of the manual.
- “If you answered “No” to question number 5, what information didn’t you find in the manual about installation?” – An optional followup for #5.
- “Did the manual contain all of the information you needed to configure Dungeon Escape’s controls, graphics, and sound to your liking?” – This is similar to questions #3 and #5, but addressing yet another part of the manual.
- “If you answered “No” to question number 7, what information was missing from the manual regarding configuration?” – A followup just like #4 and #6.
- “Did the manual contain all of the information you needed in order to get a basic understanding of the gameplay of Dungeon Escape?” – Like the previous questions, this will let us know whether or not this section of the manual is thorough.
- “If you answered “No” to question number 9, what gameplay information didn’t you find in the manual?” – Last one, we promise.
- “On a scale of 1-5, how frightening did you find the game to be (5 being most
frightening)?” – In essence, this lets us know whether or not we did a good job designing the game. It’s a horror game so it is meant to be scary. This tells us whether or not the game was effective at delivering terror into the minds of our audience… they should remember the game forever. - “On a scale of 1-5, how difficult did you find the game to be (5 being most difficult)?” – This sets up for #13. With both of these questions we want to find out the difficulty tolerance that our audience has, and find out if we should consider trimming down the difficulty by a notch (which Jason would probably refuse to do).
- “Would you say the game is too difficult?” – We are considering integrating this into question #12’s numerical scale, such as just making 5 being “too difficult”.
- “What aspects of the game did you find to be most difficult?” – It will be useful to know which aspect of the game is the most difficult. Combined with questions #12 and #13, it could give is an idea of what area of the game we should consider making less difficult.
- “Did you enjoy playing Dungeon Escape?” – We couldn’t make this survey without asking this.
- “Would you recommend this game to others?” – Like the previous question, this question is basically a requirement. If they say yes that means in theory a game like this would sell, which means we did a good job!
- “What kind of gameplay changes, if any, would you have liked to see in the game?” – Their input here will give us an idea of what gameplay features they’d like to see (or existing ones they’d like to see removed).
We made many revisions to our survey. The first one was the addition of a short paragraph at the top of the survey, that states its purpose. Afterwards we rearranged the order of the survey to better fit this statement. Questions about the manual now come first, and these questions are in a logical order (sort of like reading through the manual from front to back).
Questions relating to the game itself are now grouped after the questions about the manual. We followed tradition in putting questions like “Did you enjoy the game?” and “Would you recommend this game to others?” at the end of the survey. Another big revision involved breaking down one question into several, more specific ones. Looking at the rationale listed above, questions 3-10 all stem from one original, broad question we had, which was “Did the manual contain all of the information you needed?” We took this question and broke it down, making them revolve around specific topics within the manual.
These revisions make the survey more professional, more clear, more detailed, and they will provide us with more clear and detailed data. We’ll now understand what specific aspects about the manual need improvement. Our survey will be packaged with our manuals, which will be distributed via printed copies. However, if we have enough time we’ll try to gather even more data by letting others download our game from the internet, complete with the manual and the survey, and send the survey results back to us. This wouldn’t be a public assessment though, Jason would send the game and manual/survey to distant friends and contacts of his, and get the results back from them. This isn’t a necessity for our project but more data couldn’t hurt.