Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Social games are utilizing virtual currency to increase the gaming experience as well as their bottom line. Users must progress through a checkout user interface in order to obtain this virtual currency, and the onus is placed on the development team, including the user researcher, to optimize this interface. Playfish recently performed testing on a new version of its checkout interface in one of its social games, Pet Society. It explored the usability and security of the interface, as well as the degree to which the interface integrated with Facebook’s checkout interface. While current spenders rated security quite low due to past personal and second-hand experiences, non-spenders’ ratings were not yet sullied by a negative checkout experience. Therefore, improvement to the interface, particularly in the security domain, has the ability to increase new users’ perceptions when purchasing virtual currency, which may increase the number of microtransactions moving forward.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Brown

Cairns

(2004). A grounded investigation of game immersion. CHI 2004, 1297–1300.

Hurwitz

J. B.

(2011). The influence of trust and privacy risk-taking on user acceptance of electronic services that collect personal information. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 55th Annual Meeting, 1110–1114.

Jennett

Cox

Cairns

Dhoparee

Epps

Tijs

Walton

(2008). Measuring and defining the experience of immersion in games. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 66, 641–661.

Josang

Roslan

Boyd

C. A.

(2007). A survey of trust and reputation systems for online service provision. Decision Support Systems, 43, 618–644.

Lewis

J. R.

(1995). IBM computer usability satisfaction questionnaires: Psychometric evaluation and instructions for use. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 7, 57–78.

Ling

Salvendy

(2006). Importance of usability considerations to purchase intention on e-commerce website with different user groups. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 50th Annual Meeting, 1457–1460.

Smith

Hudson

(2011). Inside virtual goods: Spending and usage habits of the social gaming audience 2011. 1–107. Retrieved from www.insidevirtualgoods.com

Verna

., (July 2011). Virtual goods and currency: Real dollars add up. eMarketer, 1–16.

Virzi

R. A.

(1992). Refining the test phase of usability evaluation: How many subjects is enough? Human Factors, 34, 457–468.

Improvement of a Social Gaming Checkout User Interface

Abstract

Get full access to this article

References