Eli Hodapp
“Dad Testing” is Just As Important as Beta Testing
It’s easy to get insulated in a world of tech savvy individuals, especially in the tight-knit circles of iOS development. I’m going to speak in terms using the word “we” and “us” here because chances are, if you’re reading this, you’re the kind of person who spent their lives at least vaguely dabbling in technology. We grew up with early home computers, then eventually graduated to early portable electronics have a deep history of experience to draw from with UI queues, usage habits, and more. We also, all too often, assume that everyone else has this innate knowledge as well.
I know I’m more than guilty of this, as I’ve desperately tried to give over-the-phone tech support to family members, skipping what seems to be common sense steps to me that throw a massive wrench into the mix. There’s so many good examples of this that it’s hard to even choose one to cite here. Hell, I’ve even hit bumps telling people to “Open Finder” on a Mac. All of us have experienced similar things as we’ve been defaulted into the family role of “computer guy.”
I think my Dad is an almost perfect example of the typical iPad user. He hadn’t synced the device since I initially plugged it in to my parents’ Mac Mini to set it all up, but keeps it near him almost everywhere he goes. When I first gave it to him, the device was incredibly foreign. I had to explain even the most basic things, from tapping with the pad of your finger to the concepts of what apps were and how to switch between them.
He picked up on it all remarkably fast, and the next time I saw him he was flying through web sites in Safari, more involved in his email than I’ve ever seen him, and even had downloaded some apps on his own. Nearly six months later, and he’s absolutely mastered the iPad, or, as close to master as a 58 year old can get who didn’t get involved in using a computer much at all until I bought him one.
What’s so curious about this though, is that while my Dad is an iPad wizard, design cues that harken back to traditional computing are completely lost on him.
I often tell him to get new games I think he’ll like, and it’s just amazing watching him play them. We approach problems in video games in a way that (potentially) over 20 years of playing them have taught us, but not my Dad. He tackles challenges in video games in ways that immediately make sense.
Take Angry Birds, for instance. It was among the first games I loaded on the iPad as soon as I took it out of the box. I didn’t even have to say anything and my Dad was experimenting himself, drawing the slingshot back to fire the birds. Granted, it took multiple retries for him to even beat the first level, but it goes to show just how well that game is designed that someone like my father knows how to play it without a single word.
Recently, I told him to check out Cut The Rope, since he told me he enjoyed some of the other physics-based three-star-earning puzzle games I’d told him to try. Right now when you download Cut The Rope, on its first launch a little new display pops in from the top of the screen. To us, these kind of things are normal. We understand the power of cross promotion, and fully realize that Zepto Labs is utilizing the Cut The Rope install base to push players to Cut The Rope: Experiments.
The issue is, when this news display rolls down, it greys out the rest of the screen. My Dad told me the game was broken, and he couldn’t get it to work. I had no idea what he was talking about, since Cut The Rope always worked for me and I’m not really sure how you could be confused into thinking it was “broken.”
Today I was finally able to see what he was talking about. My Dad didn’t see the news display as “news” at all, he was seeing it as part of the main title screen. The button to play was clearly visible, although slightly darker, and tapping on it did nothing. It took me all of about a half a second to realize what was going on here, and instinctively tapped the “X” on the top corner to close the pop-up, at which case everything went back to normal. But, to my Dad, hitting the “X” never even registered as something to do to “fix” the game.
This brings me to the point I’m trying to make here in that while beta testing your games to make sure they’re bug free is important, I’d argue it’s just as important to “Dad test” your games with someone that more represents your typical iOS user. iOS games and apps, entirely too often, seem to be developed inside of a complete echo chamber where everything makes sense to you. But of course it makes sense, you made it, you show it to the same people, and chances are those people at least have a somewhat similar knowledge base as you.
I’ve seen zillions of threads with iOS developers trying to divine the ingredients of Angry Birds’ success, but really, I think a lot of it has to do with just how intuitive of a game Angry Birds is. That’s something all iOS developers should shoot for, even if you’re not making a game that appeals to the typical “casual” crowd.
So seriously, find some people to “Dad test” your game on. Load it up and hand it to them. See how they try to play it, watch where they fail. See what points they try to tap on, and if something doesn’t do what they expected it to, find out what they thought it would do and why. You might be amazed what you find out.
