[IGDA Mobile-SIG List] Hi

[Wendy Fischer]

I've been working on mobile games for over a year, and I've been doing
mobile interface design for a couple of years. 

I think there's a couple of things - 

1) What the state of user interface design and usability in the mobile
gaming industry?  From my observation, while usability and user
experience is a big concern, there doesn't seem to be a lot of industry
support for user experience design and usability in the mobile software
development process.  The focus is on shipping ASAP, not taking some
extra time, following a user centered design process, doing usability
testing and shipping later.

2) Are mobile gaming companies employing UX designers? Most demos I've
seen of products seem to be designed by a developer or a product
manager, not a designer. A presentation at Mobile Monday comes to mind
where a DChoc product manager with a development background designed the
UI.

3) What are companies currently doing to improve the user experience of
mobile games?

Obviously there's many design issues and factors associated with mobile
games, with multiple phones, multiple mobile OS's, porting, multiple
development platforms, variations on the network experience (Verizon vs.
sprint, for example) that can impact game design for multiplayer
games.....I can go on -- there's so many, that impact the design of the
game that it makes it difficult to design one usable user experience
that can be utilized across all the phones and carriers.




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