With the successful release of the Kinect it would be fair to say that there’s been an increase of activity and odd movement or gestures going on in living rooms around the world. You wouldn’t think that the odd movements used to control the Kinects’ games wouldn’t have much meaning to anyone not playing the game other than a source hilariousness, but that’s not the case for usability expert Jakob Nielsen. Nielsen has been looking at how much the required movements vary from game to game even though they accomplish the same result. Nielsen has come to the conclusion that while there’s no doubt the Kinect is “fun to play” it’s very inconsistent, full of awkward dialogs and poorly-communicated warnings, and relies too heavily on gamers remember game specific moves and instructions. For example, there’s a generally accepted command for “pause” that is applied to most Kinect titles, almost all other commands are left up to the individual developer.

What this breaks down to is while you would use one hand and a certain motion to accomplish a certain command, that exact same command would be performed completely different on another title. As for problems with dialog, Nielsen suggests having developers work on status messages – such as telling the player to move closer to the TV – and having these messages pop up in the area of concentration for the gamer. As it goes now Nielsen observed that even large messages that were showing up in the periphery of the player were going unnoticed. But on the flip side of things, Nielsen says that despite players having to work through learning new commands for every title, as a whole it’s easier for the user to get use to the controls more readily than, say, the inconsistent UI’s of iPads for example. This is most likely due to gamers spending more time using or playing a game as well becoming more immersed in a single Kinect title, while iPad users tend to use multiple apps more frequently and for a lesser amount of time.

This concern for this area of the Kinect may seem silly to the gamer but as a developer this is definitely something that should pique their interest as they continue to improve game-play. Do you feel this is an important concept that developers should be looking into right away or is it something that isn’t really an issue for the casual gamer?

Stay tuned for more Kinect news and info by following us on Twitter and/or subscribing to our RSS feed.

[Source: Useit]

Authors: V_Geek

to know more click here