Articles:Social Psychology and User Research
From unthinkMedia
Game Design involves:
- understanding technology
- understanding of how people react to a given set of design choices
Contents |
Social Psychology
The understanding of how people react and interact in social situations. This allows for finding patterns across groups of people, and identifying the attributes that make the different: age, gender, nationality
Tips
It has been found that:
- people make lasting judgements within the just a minute or two. A negative first impression could make it difficult for a person to look past, even when there are various positive moments.
- it is possible to test if an NPC or Avatar is "reading" as it should.
Attractiveness
- attractiveness creates a "perception" of having more positive qualities.
- attractive people are thought to be more intelligent
The Babyface effect
- people with round face tend to be looked at as a child.
- more trustworthy
- less reliable and independent
To design for authority select a character with : longer face, large nose, prominent brow, strong chin, smaller eyes. This creates a perception of independence and needing less nurturing.
Dominance and Friendliness
First 2 questions a person ask themselves when they meet someone new is:
- Is this person friendly towards me?
- How powerful is this person?
The results of these question outlines the approach a person uses to interact with the new person.
Power of Situation
- Context has a powerful influence on a 1st impression. someone being funny at a party, as apposed to someone being funny at a funeral has lasting effects on impression. Once the situation in which the context was based on is finished ,we still tend to old that image in our head. This mean,
Game designers control both context and characters.
Marks of belonging
people make judgements on areas such as
- cultural and subcultural affiliations
- political stance
Mood Management
Emotional Contagion
- If a person expresses feeling to another person then that person will mimic those feeling interally
- Use the emotions of NPCs to influence emotion of the player
Feedback Loop
Make people act out the emotion through physical gestures.
Interesting Quotes
... people unconsciously use social rules and processes such as politeness, flattery, and judgements based on body language and the like, in their interaction with computers
