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THE AMPED-UX BLOG

THOUGHTS ON UX DESIGN, GAMIFICATION, & VR/AR in LOS ANGELES

FIVE UX DESIGN FIXES FOR ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD

3/25/2017

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Nintendo's latest chapter in the classic action-role-playing LEGEND OF ZELDA saga, ​BREATH OF THE WILD (BOTW)  has garnered deserved praise for presenting users with an immense, emergent open-world full of discovery, surprise, and charm.  If you're reading this, and you're anything like me, spending time in the fantasy realm of Hyrule consumes both  your thoughts and free time. However, as I've been digging deeper into the game, I started to notice some areas that could benefit from a few quick  user experience (UX) design improvements  to reduce some  bad friction and busywork. I wanted to share these thoughts today as I believe these  changes would result in  a more fluid and intuitive user experience.

STREAMLINE EQUIPMENT MANAGEMENT

BOTW offers a much  wider variety of  equipment than    ZELDA  games in the past, but the weapons and bows can break after extended usage. While there has been some online controversy about the wisdom of this decision, I'm not questioning it.  In fact, I think it works because in the context of a much larger world to explore, players need a continuous feed of new and interesting weapons and choices to try, as this provides tactical variety and supports longer-term mechanical engagement.
"...if you don't have any space, it tells you you're out of room, and nothing more. This is an error, and good UX designs don't permit users to make errors, they handle them."
The problem starts when the player walks over a dropped weapon and a UI button cluster prompt appears on-screen to pick it up. If you have space in your limited weapon inventory, no problem. However, if you don't have any space, it tells you you're out of room, and nothing more. This is an error, and good ux designs don't permit users to make errors, they handle them. This happens often because users tend to horde weapons.  

To get around this, users have to press Start, navigate into the weapons tab, search for a weapon they don't want, select it, then navigate to the "Drop" item in a sub-menu.   This problem with full weapon management is made worse when a new weapon is inside a treasure chest, since the chest closes when the user doesn't have enough space to pick up the weapon inside. This  requires the user to re-open the chest after going through the previous routine of clearing out weapon inventory space.
One of the ways I work around this clunky  method is to press the Right Bumper to throw the  undesired weapon away (which can be used as an attack move, such as to throw spears). This works for melee weapons, but bow and arrow weapons can't be thrown away, nor can shields. In this case, if you have full bows or shields, you have to  browse through the equipment menu again to drop something.  
Because you are dropping and switching equipment in the UI with greater frequency, users will likely encounter unnecessary friction. The best fix to avoid this clunky experience would simply be to  add a context-sensitive "Swap" option that only appears when the user tries to pick up a weapon or open a chest when the weapon inventory is full. This would no longer force users to go through this frequent and tedious routine,  making weapon inventory management more fluid and keeping users focused on the adventure and exploration, not futzing with menus.
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Users shouldn't be left hanging and have to see this.

GIVE USERS Shortcuts tO Food

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Shortcuts to Food would make combat more fluid and fast-paced.
One of the  more consistent hallmarks of UI design in the ZELDA franchise, even since the 16-bit era,  has been the ability to remap the button functions to use different items. With  BOTW​ we now have a system of magic rune powers that gives users agency over the game's physics systems, and an  ingredient and cooking system  that allows users to create different food items and elixirs to restore health  and/or grant status benefits, like increased damage or resistances.
While you can select from the magic runes by pressing and holding DPad Up (more on this in a bit), there is no quick access to food items.  Instead, users have to press the Start button, browse  to the Food tab, sort through several sub-pages, then sift through  an item matrix  to read and evaluate which dish or elixir confers the desired status effect and/or restores the right  amount of health (too much health would waste the food's benefit, too little and the user has to eat multiple items).
This UI song-and-dance routine wouldn't be so bad if it didn't happen all the time, but combat tends to be less forgiving and more lethal in this new  ZELDA  than previous entries in the franchise.  Even within the first several dozen hours of play it's quite common for enemies to nearly kill you  in one hit, requiring frequent pauses during  combat  to sift through menus and evaluate healing/buff items.
"...frequent pauses during combat to sift through menus and evaluate healing/buff items ... puts quite a crimp of the pacing and fluidity of combat."
This puts quite a crimp on the pacing and fluidity of combat, so one possible solution would be to clear up one of the DPad directions for a list of user-configured  Food shortcuts to better support personalized, predetermine playstyles and introduce more of an element of planning versus clunky reactiveness. Here are two potential solutions, both of which would involve a number of cascading changes to  the UI to make it work.
  • Relocate the Horse Whistle -  Pressing DPad Down makes the player character ("Link") whistle to  summon his current horse. While it's a semi-frequently used function, an acceptable tradeoff to place this one or two steps away. It could be grouped within the Rune Magic functions, or contextualized as a special item like a whistle or ocarina and placed within the Start Menu.  Many times the horse can't reach the user anyway (due to distance or obstacles), so  this is another instance of UX design permitting bad friction by allowing uncertain or undesired outcomes.  
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There's no reason you couldn't browse bows and arrows in a 2D matrix versus a linear row.
  • Relocate the Arrow and Shield Switching functions - Pressing DPad Left brings up an auxiliary menu that permits users to select shields or arrow types, depending on the primary  weapon type the  user has  currently selected. In my experience with the game so far, the frequency that I need to switch my shield or arrows  is either moderate  or infrequent , so these functions could be relocated.  Expanding the primary weapon selection (on DPad Right) from a  linear row of weapon selections to a matrix of 2 rows would achieve this. In the case of the melee weapon selection,  the top row would be weapons, while the bottom row would be shields (which would be greyed out if the player selects a two-handed weapon). If the user draws their  bow, then the top row becomes bows, while the bottom becomes  the arrow types. 
Regardless of the solution used, users would also  need an additional submenu item added when selecting food items to "Add to Shortcuts" or "Remove from Shortcuts." There may need to be some additional constraints around the number of food shortcuts users can  add, but I don't see a reason why the food shortcut UI couldn't be a unlimited 2d matrix instead of  a linear list, or it could be contextualized as a limited but upgradeable quantity, much like the weapon capacity upgrades users find later in the game. 
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MAKE RUNE MAGIC SELECTION MORE FLUID

Another solution to free up one of the DPad buttons for Food Shortcuts  would be to revamp  or streamline the Rune Magic selection interface. Selecting a specific Rune is a little clunky - users have to press DPad Up to bring up the Rune selection UI, then use  the Right Analog stick to browse through the linear list, release DPad Up, then hold the Left Bumper to activate the Rune power, which usually requires another few steps, such as  aiming with the Right Stick, then throwing or dropping one of two bomb runes or activating the power  with the "A" Button.  

What makes the Rune selection process slightly clunky is that if you hold the Left Bumper to  enter the Rune mode, and you have the wrong power selected, you have to back out and go through the Selection process again.
A more fluid solution would be to change the function of the DPad  during Rune Magic mode so that it overrides the weapon  selectors. Users  can't use weapons, shields, or arrows, during Rune Magic mode anyway, because the mode  tends to be used more for  solving physics puzzles (though not always).  Because there is less of  a pressing need to configure weapons in Rune Magic mode, changing powers on the DPad would enable users to  swap between the different Rune magics more fluidly without the need to fiddle with backing in and out of the current Rune Magic UI to find the power you want.

WARN USERS THAT FOOD STATUS BUFFS DON't StACK

During a recent session, I had just washed down a roasted fish and mushroom skewer with a speed elixir to take out an ancient  guardian robot, when I discovered that many food buffs don't stack. Instead, the effect of one food item overrides the other. While I  would've preferred to err on the side of greater user agency and allow stats to stack, especially in a game that emphasizes player freedom and agency over saying "no" to the player, I can understand that it might make combat too easy.  

​What I would  prefer to see would be some warning or confirmation prompt that you're about to replace and lose your previous buff.  This would be especially helpful if you just consumed a rare, high value, or powerful food item and was about to wipe it out with a weaker one, preventing user error. 
UPDATE - looks like this is conveyed in a tooltip in the loading screen. While this helps somewhat, this feedback is out of context because the tool tips are randomized. The feedback would be better conveyed at the point of interaction.

GIVE USERS BETTER Item SORTS

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LOTS of items, one sort...
When you sort items, like ingredients for cooking or crafting, there is one sort type and it doesn't really tell  you much  about the method it chooses to sort by. It seems to be by a general type (such as fruit, plants, meats, critter, mineral, for ingredients, and then by effect type for food).  But in some instances, this enigmatic sort is not helpful. What if you're talking to a merchant and you want to sort the items by worth to find out what's the most valuable item? Nope! You have to sift through items one by one to see how much you can sell them for.  How about sorting them by what you have the most number of items? Ditto, no can do.
This fix is pretty simple - just enable the sort button "Y" to cycle through a few additional sort types and adding a few text labels ("Sort by Value", "Sort by Amount", etc..) to improve usability and alleviate inventory busywork.

CONCLUSIONS

It may seem a little nit-picky to call these UI design issues  out in a game that succeeds at significantly changing  up stale aspects of the ZELDA  formula and achieving what Nintendo set out to do - creating a truly emergent and enthralling world to explore. But there's always room for improvement, and who knows, maybe someone at Nintendo will read this and think about it for future patches.  What do you think? Are there other things about ZELDA ​'s UX design that could be done better ?  Please share your thoughts in the comments. Thanks for reading!
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MINIMAL  VIABLE  USER  EXPERIENCE:  UX  FOR  START-UPS  (PART  TWO)

5/30/2016

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Welcome back to Part Two of Amped-UX’s “Minimal Viable User Experience - UX for Start-ups” series.  In the last part of this series, we described a high level overview of what User Experience is and talked about the importance of several concepts and "flavors" of UX, such as Usability, User Research, and Content Strategy.   For this installment we’re going to take a look at the practices of Information Architecture, UX Design, and UX Prototyping.

WHAT  IS  INFORMATION  ARCHITECTURE?

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When a big building is made of bits and bytes, there's often more than one UX design that flows through it, and they don't serve the same end users.
Information architecture (IA) is a fancy word for the process of designing multiple end-user experiences or "environments" that are all intended to share or access a similar base of information.  At its core it is the process of tackling a big complex problem (consisting of all the data, requirements, and features that a product or platform needs to support) and organizing a plan to distill it into smaller, more discrete, and more manageable chunks.  Each of these chunks may be  focused on the needs of multiple yet dissimilar end-users who all need access to the same source of information.
 Sounds important, doesn’t it?  It sure is!  Truth be told, I dislike the term "IA" as good UX is about promoting clarity and reducing confusion, so it’s ironic that this term is less immediately obvious than others, but it's arguably the most complex part of UX.  A helpful metaphor I picked up is that information architecture is the design of a holistic structure of a building, like a museum, including the public galleries as well as all the wiring, lighting, plumbing, security, and AC system.   One user's experience may entail following one path through the front-door of this metaphorical museum where they see the latest public exhibits, but much of the underlying complexity remains hidden.   Another user experience defines how an electrician or plumber accesses and interacts with the museum, which entails both more "under-the-hood" information and complexity that offers a  completely different experience from what   public users see.
 IA, then, is a form of research, but unlike content strategy and user research which focuses on the needs and behaviors of external customers and how best to reach them, IA focuses more on the technical needs and constraints  of internal resources with a greater emphasis on information technology and engineering.   An information architect not only needs to think about the needs of multiple end-user needs as uncovered by user research, but they have to balance those against internal needs and resource/technical constraints  when making important architecture decisions ​.

Why  is  Information  Architecture  Important?

Coding is hard, mentally taxing work.  Software projects don’t have unlimited funds, good programmers are expensive, and development almost always takes longer than you expect.  If you have bad IA or are lacking in it, then like a house built with no plans, you risk building something that lacks durability, cohesion, or structure.  As your startup operation grows and you add weight and pressure to this house beyond what it was designed to handle, it will start to strain under the pressure.  This manifests itself as confusing UX, friction, or unmet end-user needs.  It may lead your engineers to implement band-aid fixes or temporary work-arounds, when what is really needed is to start from scratch and architect a new, robust solution to handle more complex needs.
"If you have bad IA ... you risk building something that lacks durability, cohesion, or structure ... This manifests itself as confusing, poor UX, friction, and unmet end-user needs ...What is really needed is to start from scratch and architect a new, robust solution to handle more complex needs."
Also, if insufficient time is spent on information architecture, you may find that you’ve overlooked critical tools or that other end-users on your team or your client needs to do their job effectively.   For example, a content marketing team for a big e-commerce site might need a web-based CMS tool to upload photos and videos onto your site to promote new item releases or promotions, while your customer service end-users need back-end tools to track and document complaints or associate them with specific orders.  Good information architecture boils all these requirements and data into the simpler, more actionable plans, anticipates as many of the unexpected use-cases and exceptions as possible so that a large-scale software can deliver holistic value to all your end-users most efficiently.

When  Should  I  Use  Information  Architecture?

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Not every startup needs an Information Architect, but if you do, use IA early. Under certain circumstances you may have to wind it back up post-launch to support different end-user types as your startup grows.
The short answer is that it depends! There is a natural overlap between UX Designers and Information Architects, as both roles entail asking effective questions to uncover  end-user needs, internal constraints, and making decisions based on those findings. Some projects are sufficiently simple that hiring an official, formal Information Architect separate from a UX Designer may not be necessary (for example, a simple mobile game).  Other projects have massive amounts of information to sift through, such as websites that can be accessed from mobile or desktop in multiple languages, and have teams or other departments that are not customer-facing.   If your project is likely to have a large team of engineers or multiple end-user personas to support, or large distributed teams and departments, then Information Architecture is likely to be something you’ll need to front-load as much as possible before any major coding or development efforts begin.  It should also occur in parallel with User Research and Content Strategy and should precede or run in parallel with UX Design.  
If you'd like to learn more about some more in-depth Information Architecture books and resources for further review, check out this helpful  article from UX Matters.

What  is  User  Experience  Design?

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UX Design is the process of taking the all the requirements, features, and constraints informed by other UX practices and starting the official process of organizing information, and features into a form that defines the moment-to-moment experience of moving through your software. This can take the form of rudimentary sketches, flowcharts, screen mockups, and diagrams called wireframes.  The purpose of these materials is to detail step-by-step how the software guides users to experience and interact with functions and information, and how all the pieces of the UX puzzle start to fit together.  Sometimes these diagrams can be large and intricate, other times interactions are chopped up into smaller flows.  Often it’s necessary to annotate UX Design materials with notes that may convey additional details or information for developers.  This can be especially important if the team is distributed or the UX Designer may not be immediately accessible to relevant stakeholders.  While there’s plenty of dedicated tools out there for creating UX Design materials, some also believe that good old-fashioned pencils and paper can be best.

WHY  IS  USER  EXPERIENCE  DESIGN  IMPORTANT

For the other user experience practices, usability is of general, but not necessarily primary importance.  For example, a User Researcher gathers quantitative and qualitative data from users, or produces analysis documentation or persona sheets, but they’re not creating usability just yet.  The same applies to an Information Architect: they may have to understand both internal and external needs and constraints and come up with a high-level plan showing how to organize all the relevant information systems in an abstract sense.   While they don’t want to propose solutions that are unusable, they are not directly responsible for producing usability on a tactical, moment-to-moment level.  
"UX Design materials can outline a holistic, detailed, and comprehensive blueprint for a product, but it’s useless unless it’s used to spark conversation and to build consensus amongst stakeholders, so that other developers down the line ... can understand what it is that they are expected to create. "
However, this is not the case for the User Experience designer.   The Designer has to take all of the findings from the User Research, think about the Information Architecture requirements (if the project is complex), how the Content Strategy will position the product, and start producing screen layouts and flows in an organized way that is intuitive and promotes usability.  In my experience, UX Design materials can outline a holistic, detailed, and comprehensive blueprint for a product, but it’s useless unless it’s used to spark conversation and to build consensus amongst stakeholders.  This helps other developers down the line, such as Visual/Interaction Designers and programmers, understand what they are expected to create.  Thus, UX Design provides the foundation from which later phases of development stand upon.  
While some UX wireframes and flows do closely resemble what your final software looks like, they are still just assumptions, and there are lots of twists and turns on the path to development.  Also note that UX Design materials can support ongoing user research and usability testing.  UX Designers are just as liable to make incorrect assumptions about what’s best for users, so if you can add this to your process, especially for uncertain or contentious aspects of your UX design materials, it can help validate that your project is staying on-course, saving time and money.  

When  Should  I  Use  User  Experience  Design?

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UX Design is most effective after some initial end-user research is done and tends to taper off as development proceeds and features get made (assuming things go smoothly)
In general, UX Design should always run ahead of functional development or programming, but ideally should take place after some inital end-user research has been done (and information architecture, if it's needed).  However, you may encounter a school of thought that wireframes should be as quick as possible, or even something that you skip over.  You may hear about “designing in the browser,” this refers to skipping over creating traditional UX Design going straight into implementation using HTML, CSS, or Javascript.   I think it's important to make a distinction that this doesn't mean that you skip over UX Design, it's just that it takes a different form.
​For example, I love getting caught up in the creative momentum of clarifying a strategic and visual plan using wireframes, mockups, and flows as much as anybody, but I didn’t create any when building Amped-UX.com (maybe this is obvious...you tell me!)  My goal was to revamp my online branding and presence as quickly as possible to learn as much as possible.  I knew that if I chose to make wireframes, it could easily add weeks to the process.  Weeks where my site would not be up and running.  So in my case,  there wasn’t any external pressure or deadlines,  so it made sense to skip wireframes and "design in the browser" so to speak.
"You may encounter a school of UX thought that wireframes should be as quick as possible, or even something that you skip over... I think it's important to make the distinction that this doesn't mean that you skip over UX Design, it's just that it takes a different form."
It all depends on your situation and how effectively the UX Design can be communicated to other relevant parties and stakeholders.  In general, I wouldn’t advise skipping wireframes for large or complex projects, if there’s signficant Information Architecture needs, or if external enterprise clients are involved.   The budgets for these projects can be quite large, and there’s a lot riding on them, so if there is time and resources allocated for wireframes and the client is paying for it or expecting it, I wouldn’t short-change it.  
 This doesn't meant that wireframes are the best way to do UX design - they are static and in some instances it can be challenging for stakeholders to understand dynamic elements, how the user experience changes or flows over time, or how your UX Design might look on web, versus mobile, versus tablet.     If you choose to streamline wireframes, replace it with other forms of UX Design.   Take the time to consider the risks, benefits, and potential outcomes of all the approaches at your disposal, then you can make an informed choice that makes sense for your project. 

To learn more about this debate within UX Design and some pros and cons (well, mostly pros) to the "No Wireframes" approach, check out this article from  Zurb.com.

What  is  UX  Prototyping?

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UX Prototyping is a specialized user experience design practice where UX Designers take initial ideas for user experiences and implement them into an interactive form in a fast, efficient way.  Wireframes, mockups, and flows can be great for clarifying the big picture, but to an untrained eye they can be difficult for assessing usability.  While knowing how to program using HTML or CSS can be an effective prototyping method, the good news is that you don’t need to know how to program to create UX Prototypes.  There are a variety of dedicated tools for interactive prototyping, like Pixate, Invision, or Sketch, that enable you to quickly create beautiful animated prototypes that replicate the superficial look and feel for real apps without writing a single line of code.   Or you could get old-school simple and bust out the crayons, scissors, glue, and table, and make paper prototypes of screens or target  sub-portions of your product.     

WhY  is  UX  Prototyping  Important?

If there are differing ideas or assumptions about what product features are important, useful, or intuitive for your end-users, prototyping, in conjunction with user/usability research, can save your start-up a ton of money and time.  Also, if a UX feature is innovative, there’s a good chance that it may be quite different from what end-users are used to, and potentially confusing.  Prototyping with User Research can take ideas out of the realm of the theoretical and get them in front of actual users and stakeholders for further testing, evaluation, and decision-making.  This can validate innovative features and reduce the potential for confusion.  This is critical to mitigate risks in the fast-paced start-up world, as once you code a feature or implement a portion of your product for real, it becomes crazy expensive and risky to make changes in code if you discover your assumptions were incorrect. 

When  Should  I  Use  or  Do  UX  Prototyping?

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Prototyping is another practice that should occur in earlier phases of the project and it's important to consider doing it if you’ve decided to bypass some of the more traditional UX Design materials (like mockups and wireframes).  Like information architecture, it should definitely precede the bulk of development and programming,  but it has the most potential to be useful when it's done in conjunction with usability research.   

Just be aware that UX prototyping is not the same as development!  The purpose of a prototype is to learn things from your users as fast as possible, then be ready throw it away.  Remember when we said that bad Information Architecture is like building an unstable house?   If you are not using a dedicated prototyping tool  and you are using an HTML framework or doing actual coding for prototyping, be wary of the temptation to continue to build on a the foundation of a hastily built prototype for actual development.  I'm not saying this is always the case, but sometimes when making code prototypes, you'll cut corners just to get it done as quickly as possible, and this makes it risky or unstuitable for longer-term development.  Once you’ve learned what you need to learn from a prototype, carefully consider the pros and cons of moving forward with it versus starting development from a clean slate.  
"The purpose of a prototype is to learn things from your users as fast as possible, then be ready throw it away... Be wary of the temptation to continue to build on a the foundation of a hastily built prototype for actual development... "

LET'S  TALK  ABOUT  YOUR  USER  EXPERIENCE  CHALLENGES

Thanks for continuing to read our Minimal Viable UX Series.   Do you feel like you're getting a better idea of what kind of UX practices could benefit your start-up team best?  Describe your challenges or thoughts in the comments.   I’d love to share further insights with you to help you solve your UX problems.

​ And don't forget to come back for Part Three, where I'll go over Interaction Design, Visual Design, and Gamification.
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MINIMAL  VIABLE  USER  EXPERIENCE:  UX  FOR  START-UPS (PART  ONE)

5/17/2016

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If you are an entrepreneur working in tech, when you think about how you want your customers to feel when they interact with your service or product, do you want them to experience feelings of frustration, aggravation, or worse, make them feel kind of stupid or dumb?  Of course not, and yet, it still happens with surprising frequency.   Consider the following: ​

  • Roberta is on a long  flight from San Francisco to Buenos Aires for a business trip.  While there’s plenty of in-flight movies, music, and games to choose from, the touch-screen controls are too finicky and she has to try three or four times just to select the damn one she wants.
  • Martin and his startup team working on a legal learning app  felt they deeply understood their end-users, because all his co-founders   went to   law school, just like their target audience.  During  development they decided they   could save time and money by cutting down on the extensive   focus testing, but  now  the app   is underperforming relative to their initial  projections.  What happened?
  • Vanessa spent a ton of time on a clean and responsive landing page design for her online trading site, but after looking at Google Analytics, she doesn’t understand why nobody is signing up for her newsletter.
While these may be three different people with different backgrounds and situations, the one thing they share in common (aside from being victims of first-world problems) is that they are all experiencing effects of bad user experience design practices.  I’m sure none of them had the intention to cause this, but somewhere along the way, it still happened.  Why?
"In today’s high-speed, socially connected world, the distinguishing factor between business success and failure often boils down to who has the better UX. ​"
The good news is that 99% of the time it’s not the users’ fault, as all of these problems can be averted with a little dash of good user experience design  practices, making these people’s lives more enjoyable, saving time, and hopefully making sure your company can keep the lights on! 
While almost all people would say good UX design is desirable,  how exactly can you achieve good UX if you don’t fully understand what it is, how it works, or what’s appropriate to your situation?  As an entrepreneur, you might be looking at job descriptions, portfolios, trying to find a solution, but sometimes you see so many terms and names and buzzwords it just makes your head spin - you just want someone who understands your problem to fix it!
To help address these concerns, in this three-part blog series we’re going to take a high-level look at what UX is, explore some of its different components, demystify terminology, and explain both why and when it’s important for your business to leverage UX effectively.

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"Good UX is clinically proven to help users like you grow arms!"

What  Is  User  Experience?  

User Experience is the holistic experience of real people interacting with your startup's brand and software, encompassing the design, distribution, organization, and implementation of information and interactions to serve both the emotional needs of real people and an organization’s objectives.  It’s a complex and fascinating field that touches a variety of disciplines, processes, and practices, including psychology, art, technology, marketing, business, finance, and more.  All practices within the UX spectrum promote clarity and increased levels of positive user emotions (such as engagement and delight), strive to reduce negative friction, and increase the chance of building great products that reach audiences and fulfill business objectives.​   In today’s high-speed, socially connected world, the distinguishing factor between business success and failure often boils down to who has the better UX. ​

What  Are  the  Different  Types  of  UX?

​As a professional pursuit related to technology, UX can appear complex and ever-changing.  UX is like a toolbox with many subcomponents that UX professionals apply judiciously over the lifecycle of software product development.  Some UX’ers are specialists and provide one or two types of services really well, like Visual Design or Research, while others are generalists with less extensive but broader applicable skillsets who can follow problems and adapt to changing needs.   
  • In the first part of this blog, we will explore the concepts, practices, and processes of Usability, User Research, and Content Strategy.  
  • Part Two will go over Information Architecture, UX Design, and UX Prototyping. 
  • ​Finally, in Part Three we’ll cover Visual Design, Interaction Design, and Gamification.  
If you are a start-up owner or entrepreneur, chances are you're strapped for cash or resources.  If this sounds like you, then you'll may be best served by a UX generalist who can  provide a variety of UX services.  Although, after going through this blog series, you'll  might come to the alternate conclusion that a specialist might best serve your business.  This is cool too!  
When thinking about your needs, one thing  you should note is that the boundaries between the various UX practices are not set in stone!  In fact, responsibilities, roles, decisions, actions taken in one UX phase or practice often overlap with other parts (this may be more true if you are working with a UX generalist) and this is ok!  UX is a fluid, ever-evolving process of iteration and organic collaboration between many disciplines and individuals.  Try not to get too hung up on it, and let’s get started!

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This smartphone app is so happy because it's highly usable!

What  is  Usability?

Let's begin with a definition.  Usability is less of a process or phase of UX development than it is a fundamental quality that all UX products should strive to achieve and uphold.  It is the measure of the utility and ergonomics of a product (ie - how intuitive or easy it is to use) and reflects the emotional appeal and end-user quality of a UX product.  ​
Nobody wants to deal with cumbersome tools, clunky interfaces, or confusing interactions.  A product or service with poor or low usability is more likely to produce user frustration, confusion, or friction, which is when users struggle or are impeded or slowed down from fulfilling a specific goal.   Why does this happen?  Usually because one or more of the UX practices are overlooked, which, sad to say, can happen quite easily!   Developers or entrepreneurs sometimes overlook good UX because they can be strapped for resources.  Sometimes they can make inadvertently self-defeating UX design decisions because they’re thinking about what’s most efficient and easiest to implement instead of what's best for their users.   
In contrast, highly usable software promotes efficiency and user satisfaction, and when you have a product that is used by thousands or even millions of people every day, that adds up to big gains in the appeal and utility of your product.  All practices in the UX spectrum are intended to generate and promote usability, but attaining it is easier said than done!  Let’s take a look at the practices that promote and support this. 

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"What I'd need is an app that helps me grow double jointed arms..."

What  is  User  Research?

User research is the process of talking to real people to collect data about the emotional needs and responses of your target users when they might interact with your product or service.  Who are your customers and what makes them tick?  What kinds of devices do they prefer to use?  What are the problems they’re having that you could solve for them, making their lives better?  These are just a sampling of questions that go into user research.  A common goal of this process is to form a fictional model of a typical end-user, known as a persona.  Another goal for User Research is to create a "user journey maps", which outline the emotional phases  and actions a fictional persona might go through as they learn about and interact with a brand or product.  
User research and persona formation also provide guidelines for what types of real people your organization should recruit to participate in usability testing during development.  This entails observation and analysis of how real users interact with your software product.    ​

Why  is  User  Research  Important?

User research should be the foundation of any UX endeavor, for how can you have great user experiences without really understanding your users?  Without a firm mental model of who you’re really making a product or service for, how people react to what you’ve created, or how well it meets users’ emotional needs, you’re courting unnecessary risk.     Unbiased user testing and research helps ensure that your organization or business doesn’t stray too far from its original purpose and stays focused on providing continuous value that speaks to genuine user wants and needs.   
"User research should be the foundation of any UX endeavor, for how can you have great user experiences without really understanding your users?"
Ongoing user research in development can moderate the influence of overly-subjective opinions and perspectives on the decision making process, using metrics and quantitative data in conjunction with written or verbal qualitative feedback to focus efforts on real user needs and emotions.   

​When  Should  I  Use  or  Do  User  Research?

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Research is one of the most important flavors of UX practice across the entire Product Lifecycle?
Ideally, all the time, if you can, but only if your organization is ready to put what you learn from it to good use.   User research should be a "feedback loop" that's up and running through all phases of the software development lifecycle, not just up-front when you’re making a persona or a user journey.  Some organizations bypass the persona formation but there is always risk that you or other internal stakeholders on your team may assume incorrect things, overlook critical user needs, or inadvertently make decisions about what is good for yourselves instead of your audience.  And I've seen more than a few times when  shortchanging the usability research during the middle or later phases of product development  has resulted in self-defeating product failures.  Don't do it!
    No matter when you apply User Research, it's important to "get out of the office" and talk to real potential customers  who match your target market or demographic.   Researchers have a lot of tools they use to achieve their objectives, including interviews, online & offline surveys, card-sorting, analysis tools, and much more.  Another common misconception is that the research is expensive to do.  This is not the case, as  this great article from UXBooth  goes into more extensive detail about how to conduct user research without breaking the piggy bank.  
"No matter when you apply User Research, it's important to "get out of the office" and talk to real potential customers  who match your target market or demographic. " 
​Once you release your product out in the wild, also keep in mind you still need user research to monitor performance in the real world, understand user issues, and collect information for future releases and features.  So no matter where you are with your product's development, get out there and talk to your users!

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There's a whole lot of Wingdings going on in this image...

What  is  Content  Strategy?

I'm sure you've heard the phrase, "Content is King," right?  If you haven't maybe you haven't been hanging around with enough marketing people!  Content Strategy is another broad category of practice that can be hard to nail down.  It’s the practice of looking at categories of data or information, such as text, images, graphics, audio, and video, across different delivery channels, such as blogs, email, social media, and online video sites.  After you've categorized what type of content you're using, you initiate a high-level planning and analysis phase to strategize how to produce and use content and channels to best maximize appeal towards a specific target market or end-users.

​ Examples of content strategy at work include:
  • An digital marketing agency  might initiate an audit of all the videos on a client's Youtube channel to remove clips that convey an outdated or inappropriate message that is “off-brand.”  
  • A popular but old blog might need to revamp all the formatting of its articles to support an upcoming initiative to make the site look and feel better on mobile devices, or to be compiled into a format to support publication of all the blog articles as an e-book.
  • Another site might need to rework the filenaming conventions and resolution of all its images to optimize loading times on mobile and improve Google search rankings.
Another way of looking at content strategy is this: if you think about  empty screens and interactions in your app or website as a skeleton, content strategy illustrates how the "connective tissue" should be filled out to connect your startups service to your customers in an engaging way.  Content strategy is also critical when  you are thinking about how to initially acquire or retain your users or inform them of new developments in your startup's product or service.   Analytics is an important component of Content Strategy as you have to monitor how different types of content perform and best serve your needs.  This is where Content Strategy may overlap with User Research somewhat.     UX Writing is also an emerging form of Content Strategy that emphasizes almost programmer-like rigor and consistency  on how text and copy are used to support content strategy goals. 

Why is Content Strategy Important?

Consider what might happen if you have the wrong type of videos or articles on your site or in your app.  While this is an extreme example, imagine if you went to a gardening blog, and found articles about car parts, or worse, the discography of Phil Collins. That might be a bad user experience for some people!
An ill-formed content strategy (or none at all) can hurt the digital presence of a company online or undermine critical business performance metrics like conversion rates or sales (a real concern for e-commerce sites).     Because of this, content strategy is one of the parts of the UX spectrum that overlaps the most with marketing and branding, and it’s crucial to deepen the appeal of a product or service to specific end-users.  Good content strategy aligns the efforts of marketing and content teams to UX and business objectives, ensuring that you reach and engage end-users, fulfilling both customer and business expectations.       This is why it’s important part of UX strategy to evangelize and inform who the end-users are so everyone in the organization, from development to marketing, feels invested and can align their efforts to support highly engaging user experiences.
"Imagine if you went to a gardening blog, and found articles about auto parts, or worse, the discography of Phil Collins. That might be a bad user experience for some people! "

When  Should  I  Use  or  Do  Content  Strategy?

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Since Content Strategy governs and influences your marketing, (and you need to be selling all the time) Content Strategy is important through all phases of the Software Lifecycle.
Dwight Eisenhower once famously said that “plans are useless, but planning is invaluable.”  And that’s what content strategy should be, a continuous cycle of planning, execution, and evaluation.  Content strategy is effective before development, especially if you’re doing User Research on Personas and you want to learn about what social media, marketing channels, or types of content connect most effectively for them.  It can happen during development when you need to produce content for your app, website, or product, which you can also use to build a community and anticipation for an upcoming release.   And finally, it's super-critical during and after launch once your product goes live and you need to monitor the effectiveness of how your content is performing, or use new content to communicate changes or new features as they are developed.

If you'd like to learn some more handy pointers about Content Strategy (and why it's simpler than you think), check out this helpful article from the Harvard Business Review.  

WHAT  UX  PROBLEMS  ARE  YOU  HAVING?

That’s all the time we have for today.  Did this help you start to the about what kind of UX your startup might need?  Feel free to comment below and describe a challenge you're facing related to one of the UX concepts we’ve gone over today.   Or, if you have a different opinion or an interesting viewpoint or anecdote to share, let's hear it!  And please come back for Part Two - where we'll go over Information Architecture, UX Prototyping, and  UX Design.  
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HOW  TO  FIX  TRANSFORMERS: DEVASTATION'S  UX  DESIGN  (PART  ONE)

12/8/2015

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UX Design for Video Games is tricky business.  Typically, “friction” in UX design represents obstacles between what users want to do with your software, versus what the user interface permits them to do.  For most software development projects, friction is bad and should be removed.  For video game UX design, you need the right amount of “good” friction to provide challenging obstacles so players feel satisfaction from victory or from figuring things out (here’s a neat article from UX Magazine that goes into more detail on this).  

"Once you take off the powerful nostalgia goggles, UX design flaws emerge...The systems seem designed for smaller numbers of objects...Once developers  inflated the inventory...cracks in the  UX design start to show..."
Recently, I purchased and completed TRANSFORMERS: DEVASTATION (TF:D), a new character action video game developed by Japanese action game developer Platinum Games and published by Los Angeles-based publisher, Activision.  It’s an incredibly fluid yet carefully crafted love letter to the iconic 80’s cartoon era of the franchise, complete with the same voice actors, musicians from the 1986 movie, and subtle nods and references.
Once you take off the powerful nostalgia goggles, UX design flaws emerge with the weapon fusion, inventory, and crafting systems.  These underlying systems provide a surprising amount of depth and tools for customization. Using these systems to overcome the obstacles of the game (which provides “good” friction) can feel awesome and satisfying.  On the other hand, the inventory and crafting systems seem designed for smaller numbers of objects at a time.  Once the developers inflated the inventory with tons of randomized weapon loot, cracks in the UX design start to show, resulting in clunky, “bad friction” user experiences, such as fussing around with menus and busywork.  This puts a real drag on the pacing.
In the first part of this article we’ll analyze what’s not working with TF:D’s user experience and discuss specific UX design improvements for Activision and Platinum to consider for future projects. ​

IMPROVE  PACING  OF  ONBOARDING  &  TUTORIALS  FOR  THE  ARK

In between missions, players return to an in-game base called “The Ark.”  It’s here where players can fuse or “synthesize” weapons to create more powerful ones, develop “T.E.C.H” upgrades, and configure gear for the five Autobot heroes.  While the first level does a decent enough job of teaching the moment-to-moment gameplay systems and rules, once you get to the Ark, the game dumps several major systems on you at once, and all the handholding goes out the window.  A better option would be to temporarily disable some of the systems, then “breadcrumb” or introduce them one-by-one as missions progress with some brief, targeted feedback on how it works or why it’s useful.  This reduces the number of new things players need get used to at a time, reducing the potential for overwhelming stress and confusion.
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Optimus Prime...you'll always be my hero, but your main menu has too many systems introduced all at once. (PRESS TO ZOOM)

T.E.C.H.  SYSTEM  UX  DESIGN  IMPROVEMENTS

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This is the T.E.C.H. Chip crafting minigame. (PRESS TO ZOOM).
"Changing the mapping of buttons and functions ... with no visual feedback or prior warning feels like the game is pulling the rug out from under the user."
The "T.E.C.H.” system allows players to invest money into a little timed button input mini-game to develop computer chips to install in the various Autobot heroes.   The different “zones” aren’t fully explained the first time you develop a chip, and I put in almost 20 hours into the game before it dawned on me that the look of the T.E.C.H. icons indicates the amount of money you gambled on the chip. This wouldn’t be an issue if not for the fact that the timing-based nature of the mini-game permits you to fail, resulting in low-quality chips with defects.  When equipping and selling chips, there’s no immediately obvious visual feedback on the quality of the chip, even though this information is now more relevant than the amount of money you initially gambled on it.  Also, once you pick a tier to invest money in, if you decide to change your mind, you can’t back out of the mini-game (by pressing Circle on the PS4 controller which is the standard mapping for cancel).  Changing the mapping of buttons and functions like that with no visual feedback or prior warning feels like the game is pulling the rug out from under the user, so the minigame should let you back out of it (as it does with every other screen in virtually every other game)

Use Consistent Color Coding Across Weapons and T.E.C.H.

AMPED-UX DECONSTRUCTION - TRANSFORMERS:DEVASTATION - T.E.C.H. Minigame
Aspects of the T.E.C.H. minigame can be confusing and aren't applied consistently (PRESS TO ZOOM)
One of the things I do like about the T.E.C.H. system is that it uses color-coding to categorize some of the perks (Red chips, for example, are attack-oriented).  It’s not perfect, however.  When creating the chips, the game doesn’t explain that “red equals attack.”  In fact, during the mini-game, it’s possible that users may equate colors as a reflection of chip quality, which would be a false association.  Also, the game uses both Green and Yellow under the “Support” category (for things like getting bonus experience or money).  They don’t explain what yellow means versus green, but even these lapses aren’t the main issue.  The issue is that the weapons that you find during gameplay also have most of the same benefits.  Because both systems confer almost identical bonuses, the color-coding scheme could be applied equally, but the game only uses color coding for the T.E.C.H. chips.  
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Without color, abbreviations can be hard to interpret and require digging into sub-screens. (PRESS TO ZOOM)
Instead, they expect you to dig through sub-menus to uncover what the abbreviated bonuses on weapons mean.  A more unifying use of color-coding across screens (such as a little tab, line, or splash) and providing feedback to guide color associations would improve usability.

PROMOTE  CONSISTENT  BUTTON  PROMPTS

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Why is the same function moved elsewhere only for the "Analyze" screen? (PRESS TO ZOOM)
This is more of global issue then something that is confined any one part of the UX, but many button prompts exhibit consistency issues in presence, position, and terminology.  Players switch Autobots in the Ark by pressing the lower shoulder buttons on Playstation 4 controller (“L2” and “R2”).  This visual affordance migrates from screen-to-screen, nor is it available in some of the sub-screens, even though it might make sense or aid navigation.  Also, when examining a weapon’s characteristics with the Triangle button, on one screen, it describes this function as “Details” and the prompt is in a good position relative to the weapons panel.  However, on most screens, the same function is described as “Stats” and is displayed elsewhere.  Sometimes it’s really difficult to promote rigor and consistency throughout a UX Design (especially under tight, high pressure development deadlines), but minor deviations like this increase users’ cognitive load and add to perceptions of the UX being rushed and unpolished.

STREAMLINE  RARITY  OUT  OF  THE  UX  DESIGN

During missions, the game provides basic feedback on a found weapon’s Rarity (Common, Uncommon, and Rare).  Once you return to the Ark to identify your weapons, the whole notion of Rarity becomes meaningless as the game assigns every weapon a Rank (D, C, B, A, S, SS).  Often, you can get a Rare weapon, only to uncover that it’s a low-rank (ie - low power) weapon.  This creates dissonance between the expectations (“I got a Rare...I bet it’ll be good!”) and the outcome, (“WTF - why do I need another D weapon?”)  There’s already a direct correlation between high Rank items being much rarer than low-rank ones, but with only three tiers of rarity with little to no functional significance, the whole concept of rarity could be streamlined out of the design with negligible negative impact to the user.
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Rarity has no functional significance compared to Rank and is not necessary. (PRESS TO ZOOM)

REVAMP  THE  POST-MISSION  REWARD  SEQUENCE

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Get used to this screen, you'll see it. A LOT.
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The "Analyze" Summary screen has a number of issues. (PRESS TO ZOOM)
 Upon returning to the Ark, players are inundated with a flood-like sequence of all the weapons they’ve found.  While there’s kind of a fun, anticipatory “unwrapping the presents” quality to this sequence, after the first few times, you realize that most of it is C-D Rank trash loot and just mash the button to get through it.   Fortunately a "Skip" option will take you to an "Analyze" summary which provides a better at-a-glance view, but even this screen has problems.  You can sort by Level,  Rank, and Type, but only Level and Value is in the summary list.   In fact, there's a whole column that could be used for Rank, but instead it's used for a money icon.    These icons and the multiple "Lvl" text strings  are redundant; they would be better used as table headers, clearing out space to display Ranks to match the available sorting fucnction.   Better yet, this screen could  allow players to immediately sell weapons  to nip inventory clutter problems in the bud.    Losing the overly long presentation, taking users right to the summary, and making these improvements would go a long way to cut down on bad friction.

Are there any TF:D  fans out there who feel differently?  Is this too nitpicky, and should hardcore players just suck it up?  What did I miss, or what do you think?   Contribute to the discussion by leaving a comment below, and stay tuned for Part Two, where I'll present more UX Design improvements for TRANSFORMERS: DEVASTATION.
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THE  "INDIEAPOCALYPSE" AND  THE  PULP  FICTION  USER  EXPERIENCE

11/21/2015

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TALKING  UX  DESIGN  AND  HOW TO SURVIVE AS AN INDIE ON JON  &  TED'S  EXCELLENT GAMECAST
I recently  made a new friend via the LA Indie Game Developers Meetup.  His name is Ted Edwards from Raptorcow and he invited me to be a guest on his  podcast - "The Jon & Ted's Excellent Gamecast."  Ted and Jon seemed like cool guys and we talked about a number of fun topics.  Notable highlights include:
  • 11:17 - What's the outlook for VR now that the $99 Samsung Gear VR   is available for pre-order?
  • 1:10:42 - How does somebody   get involved in User Interface (UI) & User Experience (UX) Design for games and why is it important?
  • 1:13:04 - What is the REAL  difference between UI  and UX?
  • 1:28:28 - Why is good UX Design in demand and how can it benefit your software development project?
  • 1:45:39 - What is the  "Indieapocalypse" and what can you do to avoid it as an independent game developer?
Press the Jon & Ted's Gamecast Logo Image to navigate to the podcast,  and don't forget to leave a comment here if you thoughts on the discussion!  Thanks!
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PRESS HERE!
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UX  FAIL  VOL.  1  - aka -  HOW  TO  LOOP  A  VIDEO  ON  YOUTUBE

7/28/2015

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LOS ANGELES, CA
Rarely do I make a UI or UX related discovery that delights and angers me at the same time.  I recently learned that there is a secret repeat or "loop" function on Youtube.  Here's how to do it (it's so simple yet obtuse at the same time that it's maddening).
In Youtube, double-right click the video window, and select "Loop" from the pop-up menu that appears.

I use Youtube almost exclusively for listening to background music to enhance mental focus on tasks and remain "in the flow."   Many times, I just want to listen to the same piece of music over and over again.  Sometimes I'll search for "extended" versions of songs or playlists to remove the need to constantly interrupt what I'm doing to switch over to my YouTube browser tab and reload the video.  

I'm delighted that I found out about this feature, which is why I'm sharing it on the blog.  Hopefully it will help you too - spread the word!  But I'm also super-annoyed that it took me years to find out about it.  Why?

First, there's a long-standing precedent for obvious looping music functions in consumer product user interfaces.  Think about a repeat button on a physical CD player or even MP3 desktop player UI’s like WinAmp. You click the repeat function to toggle between repeat once and repeat all settings. 
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Something's a little rotten in Denmark...
Second, when in the 30+ year history of graphical user interfaces has any function been mapped to double-right click for God's sake?  In terms of discoverability and providing an intuitive affordance, this is a pretty obtuse implementation.  It’s frustrating because you could easily fix it by putting the function on the existing repeat playlist icon, or on the single right-click menu.

Now, I've noticed that repeat functions don't seem to be present in a lot of modern music software.  It's completely absent on iPods and iTunes (hmmm...maybe I’ll save the latter for a  future “UX Fail” blog post - stay tuned).  Did this fall out of style somehow?  

I’m open to the possibility that I’m missing some point or that it’s just not important to the majority of users, but just do a Youtube search for any artists or song title and add the word “extended mix” or “extended version."  I bet it won’t take you long to find find similar results, so draw your own conclusions.  
Amped-UX-Youtube-Video-Search-Extended
Notice how popular extended remixes on Youtube can be...
   So what do YOU think is going on with the Youtube UI?  Is the repeat function a relic of a bygone era?   Is this a well-intentioned but misguided band-aid fix?  Or are there valid business, e-commerce, or UX reasons for this implementation?  Share your thoughts in the comments below!

PS - The screenshot of Youtube was taken from the soundtrack for the video game “Shatter” by Sidhe Interactive.  It was composed by a super-talented, New Zealand-based electronic musician known as Module.  Both the game and the soundtrack are  well worth your time and support.

http://www.shattergame.com/

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    ​EDWARD MOORE

    UX Design & Gamification Consultant

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