Steve Bromley

Steve Bromley

London, England, United Kingdom
5K followers 500+ connections

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About

I am an experienced user research consultant, based in London. I wrote the books…

Activity

Experience

  • gamesuserresearch.com Graphic

    gamesuserresearch.com

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    Brighton, England, United Kingdom

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    London, England, United Kingdom

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    London, United Kingdom

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    London, United Kingdom

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    London, United Kingdom

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    London, United Kingdom

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    London, United Kingdom

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Education

  • University of Sussex Graphic

    University of Sussex

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    Developed and applied UX and usability methodology, including expert reviews, user centered design, and running lab sessions with users.

    Supplemented my academic experience by working on usability projects with Sony, Locomatrix, and Black Rock Studios (Disney Interactive)

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Publications

  • Better Playtesting For Indie Developers

    Develop Conference

    How teams with smaller budgets can apply games user research best practice to maximise the value of their playtests.

  • How To Be A Games User Researcher

    Learn how to run better playtests, reveal usability and user experience issues and make games better.

    Games user researchers run user experience (UX) studies and playtests throughout development to make sure that players experience games in the way the designers intend.

    How To Be A Games User Researcher is a practical guide on how to run these studies and work with game teams to fix usability and user experience issues.

    See publication

  • Building User Research Teams

    Building User Research Teams is a practical guide on how to build a research team of any size, starting from convincing colleagues why they need a user research team, through the development and implementation of the tools and processes needed, to running high quality studies and mapping the future development of a growing research team.

    See publication

  • User Research in VR

    VR Brighton

    A Wired Sussex talk as part of Brighton Digital Festival.

    Usability tests and user research studies are a key aspect of making sure that the experience being built matches the one in the designer's head. Virtual Reality has some unique challenges when running user tests. This talk explored these challenges and gave practical tips on how to get actionable results from testing

  • Interviewing Players (in 'Games User Research' book)

    Oxford University Press

    Wrote the chapter 'Interviewing Players' for the Games User Research book.

    Steve Bromley discusses player interviews in chapter 10. Interview tips are provided as well as an exploration of the preparation of an interview as well as methods used in GUR such as interviews during the session and final interviews. The chapter ends with a discussion of data capture analysis and thoughts on the future of interview methods.

    See publication

  • Lessons GamesUR Can Learn From ‘Mainstream’ User Research

    GamesUR European Conference 2017

    This talk outlined underused methods from across UX as a wider discipline, including introductions to diary studies, ethnography, card sorting and tree testing, co-design, personas, storyboards, and other high-value methodologies and their likely value to games research. Alistair and Steve advocated for structured research to inform design decisions, and talk about how this could be achieved, thereby presenting a frank and informative vision for maturation of the games user research domain.

    Other authors
    See publication

  • Keeping it down – How user research can help understand and minimise simulator sickness in VR

    The Research Thing

    A major concern for developers working in VR is motion sickness, which can make or break a user’s experience. In this talk, I looked at the causes of simulator sickness, how research can be run to help developers pinpoint the causes, and how the potential for sickness can be minimised within Virtual Reality experiences, based on my experience working on many best selling PlayStation VR games.

    See publication

  • Running user research for Virtual Reality

    UXBrighton

    I presented at the UXBrighton event, sharing lessons learned from designing and moderating user tests for virtual reality, and gave best practises on how to get reliable and useful data from user research sessions for virtual reality experiences.

  • Playing to Win?

    Multiplayer: Social Aspects of Digital Gaming (Routledge Studies in European Communication Research and Education)

    Wrote a chapter for the book Multiplayer: Social Aspects of Digital Gaming based on my MSc research.

    In the past decade, digital games have become a widely accepted form of media entertainment, moving from the traditional ‘core gamer’ community into the mainstream media market.
    With millions of people now enjoying gaming as interactive entertainment, there has been a huge increase in interest in social multiplayer gaming activities. However, despite the explosive growth in the field…

    Wrote a chapter for the book Multiplayer: Social Aspects of Digital Gaming based on my MSc research.

    In the past decade, digital games have become a widely accepted form of media entertainment, moving from the traditional ‘core gamer’ community into the mainstream media market.
    With millions of people now enjoying gaming as interactive entertainment, there has been a huge increase in interest in social multiplayer gaming activities. However, despite the explosive growth in the field over the past decade, many aspects of social gaming still remain unexplored, especially from a media and communication studies perspective.

    “Multiplayer: Social Aspects of Digital Gaming” is the first edited volume of its kind that takes a closer look at the various forms of human interaction in and around digital games, providing an overview of debates, past and present.

    This engaging interdisciplinary book will appeal to upper level students, postgrads and researchers in games research, specifically those focusing on new media and digital games, as well as researchers in media studies and mass communication.

    Other authors
    See publication

  • Where is the Fun? Measuring Social Interaction

    Develop Conference, Liverpool

    What it is that turns friends against each other or makes them bond during gameplay? Social interaction is becoming an increasingly important theme in multiplayer gaming. The success of casual multiplayer games such as Wii Sports or Just Dance 2, has highlighted how important playing with friends is to reaching wider audiences and creating successful game experiences. It’s therefore important to understand the types of social interaction that exist, and measure them during the development of…

    What it is that turns friends against each other or makes them bond during gameplay? Social interaction is becoming an increasingly important theme in multiplayer gaming. The success of casual multiplayer games such as Wii Sports or Just Dance 2, has highlighted how important playing with friends is to reaching wider audiences and creating successful game experiences. It’s therefore important to understand the types of social interaction that exist, and measure them during the development of games. In a collaboration between Relentless Software and Vertical Slice, this talk will show how developers can evaluate interaction from the very earliest prototypes.

    Other authors
    See publication

  • Playing to win? The Correlation Between Biometric Responses and Social Interaction in Co-located Social Gaming

    Multi.player Conference, Germany

    Presented a collaboration between Vertical Slice and Relentless Software, defining and measuring the forms of social interaction found when people play games together, in order to inform the development process.

    Other authors
    See publication

Projects

  • #GamesUR Conference

    Coordinated the second #GamesUR Conference as part of a small team.

    See project

  • #GamesUR Conference

    The #GamesUR Conference was a one-day knowledge-sharing and networking event for professionals in playtesting and player insight, debuting in London’s Conway Hall on July 17th 2015, presented by the IGDA GURSIG.

    Other creators
    See project

  • Game User Research Jobs Board

    - Present

    I created, and continue to run, the Game User Research industry jobs board, which gives companies the opportunity to share jobs directly with user researchers interested in the games industry. As of early 2016, we have advertised 53 roles for games user researchers within the UK, USA and worldwide.

    See project

  • Games User Research Mentoring Scheme

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    I created, and ran for five years the Games User Research mentoring scheme, which puts students and junior researchers in touch with established members of the games industry. As of early 2018, we have put 100 mentees in touch with over 40 industry mentors.

    See project

Organizations

  • BAFTA

    Member

    - Present

  • Games Research and UX Special Interest Group (GRUX-SIG)

    Steering Committee Member

    - Present

  • Games User Research Special Interest Group (GUR-SIG)

    Steering Committee Member

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    Responsible for developing and running the GUR-SIG's mentorship programme and jobs board.

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