Duration: 32:47

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GamesUR is a day-long event of knowledge-sharing for video game professionals leveraging games user research (gamesUR): user testing, game analytics, user experience (UX) processes.


Lessons on User Research with Gaming Robots

This talk shares lessons on conducting user research with gaming robots. Kieron Kirkland is product researcher at Reach Robotics; their product, MekaMon, is the world’s first true gaming robot. Kieron will share lessons from conducting user research with MekaMon, including overcoming the challenges of testing gaming devices that balance physical and virtual interfaces, sharing lessons on the practical and logistical difficulties of testing these type of experiences. There are myriad challenges working with long iteration cycles; hardware needs to be designed months ahead to account for production times. Keiron will explore some of Reach Robotics’ approaches to offering insight to hardware teams during the development process. As a third challenge: investigating character interactions with robotics including insights gained into how people see and interact with gaming robots. Finally, the role of usability principles, and how they can help steer User Researchers when conducting user research with novel and new interfaces.

Kieron leads user research at Reach Robotics. Their product, MekaMon, is a real life battle-bot with next-gen augmented reality gameplay.

Previous to this, he was a Lead User Researcher for the Government Digital Service (GDS), where he led a team of researchers developing the UK Government’s Data Infrastructure.

He was also a founding Director at CAST, a social change agency dedicated to supporting charities and nonprofits to use technology more effectively. While there he developed and delivered Fuse, the world’s only technology accelerator for non-profits.

He’s conducted research everywhere from the High Arctic to rural India, worked for 10 years as professional magician, and is a retired street clown.