We talked about playtesting multiple times last week, and I stumbled onto a company that does nothing but user testing for clients. Check out www.usertesting.com.
I was bouncing around their site today, and found a handful of reports they published. On report, their user testing survey, included some interesting data. For instance:
- 65% of respondents (1,304) indicated that their company has no dedicated user testing team. As I often point out in this course, many different paths can lead you to a career in the game industry. If user testing is something of interest, this stat makes me believe that this area of the industry will continue to grow, and you can find yourself digging deep into user testing on a contractual basis for companies. This could even be a solo, contract-by-contract sort of service if you marketed yourself right.
- When asked what the two most important trends in user experience (UX) will be over the next 5 years, respondents voted on Multi-device interaction and wearable technology as the #1 and #2 trends. As we move into mobile gaming this week, keep this in mind as this new area of exploration will need people that can effectively test how the next generation of mobile games might work, leveraging not only your phone, but potentially things like Fitbits, apple watches, and syncs to your laptop/PC.