Experience points: learning, product literacy and game design

Game design and product design are natural partners. They use similar tools. They reach the same users. They even share the same goal: to provide great user experiences.

This thesis asks, "Can game design build better product learning experiences, and if so, how?" It examines the learning situations created by and necessary for product design. It examines the principles of game learning. Then it looks for opportunities to apply game learning principles to product learning situations. The goal is to create engaging and successful product learning experiences, without turning products into games.

This study uses an auto-ethnographic evaluation of a gameplay session as well as participant observation and interviews with gamers to gather qualitative data. That data is sorted with an A(x4) framework and used to create user experience profiles.

The final outcome is a toolkit that identifies areas where game design could improve the design of product user experiences, especially for product learning.