FYP(SemB) Week 11: Letting Other People Play It (User Testing)

This was humbling. We invited classmates who had never seen the game to sit down and play it with minimal instructions. We gave them their role and said go.

Some things went well. Everyone immediately understood the colour coding on the stat cards — green means good, red means bad, no explanation needed. The marketplace layout felt natural to people because it looks like any online shopping page. And the leaderboard at the end was universally liked — people got competitive about their scores which was exactly what we wanted.

But some things did not go well at all. Two groups were confused by the CO₂ stat showing "79.4% of 100% limit" — they could not tell if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Is 79% good because it is below 100? Or bad because it is high? We thought it was obvious but clearly it was not. The negotiation timer at 30 seconds made people feel panicked and they just rejected offers instead of thinking about them. And the Municipality players kept saying they felt bored — their role was too passive compared to the Broker who is constantly making deals.

Watching real users struggle with things we thought were crystal clear was eye-opening. We wrote everything down and made a priority list for next week.

One tester said "the game is cool but I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing for the first two minutes" which honestly stung a little but was totally fair feedback.