Cody Reimer
ABSTRACT
This paper details how design thinking and user experience testing were used to produce documentation for a crowd-funded hobbyist board game. It describes the challenges and changing trends in technical communication for board game rulebooks, discusses the particular case and context for the board game Distilled, poses four research questions the design team faced during documentation, identifies the usability testing methods employed to playtest a new player guide, presents the results of the testing, and remarks on the pedagogical value the project had for technical and professional communication undergraduate coursework.
- Tony Bushner. 2020. Hobbyist Board Game Design Practices: How Do Board Game Designers Craft Their Rules Manuals and Solicit User Feedback on Prototype Games? Ph.D. Dissertation. Purdue University, Lafayette, IN.Google Scholar
- Laquana Cooke, Lisa Dusenberry, and Joy Robinson. 2020. Gaming Design Thinking: Wicked Problems, Sufficient Solutions, and the Possibility Space of Games. Technical Communication Quarterly 29, 4: 327-340.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Kate Moran. 2019. Usability Testing 101. Nielsen Norman Group. Retrieved June 2, 2021 from https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-testing-101/Google Scholar
- Rudy McDaniel and Alice Daer. 2016. Developer Discourse: Exploring Technical Communication Practices within Video Game Development. Technical Communication Quarterly 25, 3: 155-166.Google ScholarCross Ref
Index Terms
- Medium-Weight Euro Crunch: Technical Communication in the Hobbyist Board Game Distilled
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