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11-19-15, 12:49 AM   #1
patphyo
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Honours Thesis Survey

Hello Guys,
My name is Patrick Win and I am currently doing my honours degree on Computer Science (Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, Australia) with a topic of “Should a PC game User Interface (UI) be modifiable/customisable?” There have been very few researches done on Game related areas probably due to a lot of people perceiving gaming as a waste of time and not worth giving up their time researching about games.
I am holding a friendly survey to get public opinions on your most played game and if that game offers UI customisation options, your general opinion on UI customisation, and other questions like your background gaming experience. There will be around 10 - 15 questions depending on choices you make and will take around 5 - 10 mins at most to complete the survey. Unfortunately, I am not able to offer any incentives due to how ethics policies and regulations work in Australia but your time and input will surely help the gaming community further extend the knowledge on Game UI Customisation.
If you do decide to take the survey, please follow the link below and read the information sheet carefully which can be found on the first two pages of the survey. The survey will close on 20th December, 2015 and the final paper is expected to be released somewhere around June, 2016. The link to the final paper will be posted on this forum when it gets released.
Thank you so much for your time and your contribution would prove the world (and our parents of course ) that gaming is not just for kids and there are a lot of future academic potentials on game related areas.

Survey Link - https://www.research.net/r/PCGameUserInterface
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11-19-15, 03:25 AM   #2
kawe
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done. good luck with the research
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11-19-15, 04:26 AM   #3
lightspark
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Done
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11-19-15, 05:53 AM   #4
Dridzt
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Done, specificity was a bit low in my humble opinion.
Without the context of an UI modding site (wowinterface) as the starting point, it would not be clear at all what you mean by modifiable / customizable UI.

I mean 99.9% of games have customization options (from scale and movable elements to keybinds and video options).
If you meant player / community created customizations shared with other players as mods or addons it should have been more clearly stated and the focus of the questions could have been more directed as well.

Just my 2c.
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11-19-15, 11:27 PM   #5
Phanx
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Done, and I agree about the specificity. For example, I wasn't really sure how I should answer the questions about UI complexity -- my personal UI is visually extremely simple, with far less displayed on the screen than in the default UI and far less graphical decoration on individual elements, but in many ways it's conceptually or functionally more complicated than the default UI. I ended up rating both the default UI and my custom UI as the same complexity, but I don't know how meaningful that actually is for your reasearch.

Some other factors you may want to consider that weren't reflected in the "reasons" questions in the survey:

- Accessibility. For me, this is a big factor in UI customization. None of the options in WoW's default UI do much for my astigmatism, but since I can customize the UI, I can make text big enough to comfortably read without also making everything else unusably gigantic. There are many other ways that UI customization can make the game more comfortable (or even possible!) for people with all kinds of accessibility needs.

- Aesthetics. Customizing a game UI doesn't just have to be about fixing actual problems in the default UI. It can also just be about personal preference and making things "look nice". For example, when you get a new car, you can just drive it as-is, but things like bumper stickers and fuzzy seat covers might make you have more fun driving the car, even if they don't actually affect the car's functionality.

- Deeper engagement. Creating and sharing UI customizations (as addons/mods) builds a whole ecosystem outside of the game, and offers new ways for players to engage with the game. I know a number of addon authors (myself included) who would have forgotten about WoW years ago, but stay engaged with the community because of their addon work. The possibility of customization also introduces people to programming who would have otherwise never even considered that they could learn it or might enjoy it.
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11-21-15, 05:19 PM   #6
patphyo
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Update: Thank you everyone for your support and time. We have now reached nearly 200 survey results and to be honest, I really didn’t expect this much responses and thank you once again.
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12-04-15, 03:37 PM   #7
patphyo
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Update 2: It has been a while since I last “Bump” this post so I thought I would do it as a last time before the survey closing date. The survey will close on 20th December, 2015 and thanks again for taking your time to read or participate in this survey.
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12-04-15, 08:07 PM   #8
myrroddin
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Done, even though I am arguably retired from World of Warcraft.

I noticed the questions were geared more to "end product" custom user interfaces, and no questions regarding building, writing, designing, or other developer-centric feedback. I assume that is intentional on behalf of the survey.

... Unless some questions' answers altered what other questions might appear.
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WoWInterface » General Discussion » Chit-Chat » Honours Thesis Survey

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