3. Target Group Specification

Our product Power/Interest Grid for Stakeholders 

Monitor (low interest and low power) area got only one stakeholder group which is media. We thought that it would be somewhat important to keep them bit dated with our news just to get more hype around the game. Pleasing them isn’t that important so media stands low on power scale. 

Keep satisfied (high power and low interest) area also got one stakeholder group which is course teachers. We inform them little at the end of the day, but we would still like to please them. 

Keep informed (high interest and low power) area, like the two before, got only one stakeholder group which is developers. We need to keep them as informed as possible, but we have no need to keep them satisfied at all. 

Manage closely (high power and high interest) area got the most stakeholder groups which is four. On the lower end of both, power and interest, is gaming culture (e.g., Reddit). We felt like it has the same purpose as media, but its impact is a lot bigger when focusing on a game.  

From now on the differences between stakeholder groups are little. Next stakeholder group is gamers/users, of course it is important to please them a lot, since if they are not pleased, they will not stay as users. We felt like informing them a lot is also good to give them the feeling of having an impact.  

The most interest having stakeholder group is our own UX team because everyone of us are in this together. Also, it is important to keep ourselves satisfied which gives good motivation for all of us. 

The most power having and almost the most interest having stakeholder group is Gofore which is our customer, so they obviously have big impact on everything we do.  

 

Our Segmentation / Customer Grouping 

For our product development, we have decided to focus our solution towards people who play games - gamers. Since this customer grouping of gamers is quite wide we have further segmented the gamers according to how much they play and what is the motivation behind the playing. We found four main segments of professional gamers, regular gamers, social gamers and newbies of which we have decided to focus on regular gamers. In our research we have defined regular gamers as people who play games on a weekly base as a hobby. These gamers usually belong to a gaming community and usually focus their playing on specific games. 

First background user research 

• The basis of our product idea is to harness multiplayer gamers to come together and solve real life meaningful problems. 

• The context of our product use is inside a already existing video game. Our product is intended to be an extra challenge that players can load. Even though the challenge that the players are solving together might differ from the play context/story, the way the players will interact and the player personas/avatars will stay the same. 

• The users of our product are players (regular gamers) of a specific game who have downloaded the extra challenge which contains the meaningful multiplayer challenge. 

• What we have gathered about the gamers

• values: reliabiliy, loyality.

• needs: friend group, continuiance

• challenges: perfectionism

• expectations: ease in life.

Interview questions:

Background questions

- How old are you?
- How long have you played games?
- What games do play/ or play the most?
- How many hours per week do you play?
- Do you usually play alone or with friends?

Reasons for playing games

- What do you like in playing games?
- What keeps you returning to the same game?
- What keeps you interested?
- What kind of tasks in gameplay do you enjoy?
- What does it mean to belong to a gaming community/ how can it be seen when you are playing?

Adding meaningfulness to the game

- Do you personally like downloadable content (DLC)?
- What kind of personification do you expect from downloadable content?
- Are you interested in taking part in social issues through games, for example
slowing down climate change, decreasing bullying in schools?
- What thoughts are risen from taking part in social issues through downloadable
content?
- How do you see this would be best to execute.
- Any other thoughts? 

Interview insights:

We interviewed four players of which three (player 2, player 3 and player 4) were from our defined focus group of gamers who are playing regularly, and one (player 1) was an old gamer who had not played in years. We will focus on these three active gamers in our insights.

We collected potential participants from our own connections and each team member held one interview. We held interviews remotely and each interview took 15-20 minutes. One interviewee was a former gamer and that person hasn't played in ten years. We decided to focus on people who are playing today as they are better part of our target group. Our goal is to motivate people who spend a lot of time playing games to try our game so it is important to have current gamers' opinions.

 

Three active gamers have been playing since childhood. Two of them were able to give a weekly estimate of the time spent playing and one said that gaming took place seasonally: in some weeks it takes a lot of time and in some weeks not at all. All these three active gamers play games with other people. Two of them said that they only play with friends from real life and one said that besides real-life friends, some of his gamer friends are through games. The bigger scale gaming community was not perceived as a very significant value.

Spending time with friends was evident both as a reason to play a game and as a continuity of playing. Other issues mentioned were feeling of achieving something and that it is pleasant to follow own development. We also asked what are the things that keep interest going. In addition to the above items, the new content from the updates was mentioned, i.e. the continuous development of the game.

All three gamers play on the computer. The games mentioned were Counter-Strike, League of Legends, Old School RuneScape, Rocket League, Minecraft and Star Due Valley. Because of various games their tasks are different, and each interviewee had their own idea about good tasks.

When we had asked about gamers’ background and reasons for playing, we challenged them with questions about a social influence through playing. Three active gamers are interested in influencing society through gaming, but one of them said that he found that difficult. We asked if they had some ideas about it and ideas that came up were reducing school bullying, charitable donations and that it can’t be anything which divides opinions and puts some people in an unequal position, such as political opinions. They also brought up some possible solutions:

-       Task with some important theme that can be shared in social media after doing it

-       The more you play, the more the game manufacturer donates

-       Getting a prize is a good bait

-       It should be a mobile phone game so that as many people as possible are able to participate in.

Interviewees' answers on each question (in Finnish)

Short summary of each team member’s contribution/tasks since the last post 

Annika has investigated segmentation/customer grouping of players and segmented the player groups according to the players background and motivations to play. She has also contributed this week with ideations of different ways to catch the players attention such as using an embodied agent to recruit players to contribute to a meaningful team challenge. She has also brought the network data analytics into discussion of how to connect the right players to the right challenges to keep them motivating and interesting. Annika has also tried to get to understand different players and their communities better to prepare for interviews. 

Omar was planning interview questions with Annika and Ella. Omar also did the power/interest grid to mural and blogpost. He also held one interview.

  

Aura held one interview, wrote a text about interview insights and did the compilation of participants' responses.

Ella planned and wrote down the interview questions and did 1 one of the interviews. Also, tried to come up with ideas how to implement these ideas in testable/written format.