David Greenlees wrote an article for Stickyminds which really piqued my interest as it definitely has a place in my context of online gambling & gaming.
I’d recommend reading the “How the Usability Matrix of Emotions Can Benefit Your Software Testing” article before continuing here…
In very broad terms, our company provides customers the opportunity to bet on sports events & play casino games, inc. Poker, Blackjack & Roulette as well play on slot machines.
All of which effectively involve the customer placing a bet on an outcome.
With each bet they can potentially win, lose or get the stake back.
Obviously, there has to be some emotion involved - the amount depends on the risk & cost of winning or losing
I’m the first to admit I’m neither a great gambler or gamer (e.g. slot machines).
So in my current role as a web Tester for a bookmaker I sometimes find it difficult to adopt the necessary persona whilst doing my testing.
Sure, I adopt a certain persona of someone trying to use a website & note what might please or bug me. but for how our “punters” use the site, I ask questions of my co-workers who I consider our “in-house gambling consultants” who are always happy to give their opinion on the website.
What David’s article gave me was a tool to help me adopt a persona &/or provide more context to the “gambling consultants” when I came across what potentially might be a problem.
For the 1st draft, I’ve only changed the model slightly; rough division of emotions into wining or losing states - the assumption being that different states should result in different emotions being displayed. I’ve left the range of emotions alone as they are a great place to start.
Duncs UX Emotion matrix
Now to try the model out in anger…