Game UX Summit 22 | TINA CHAN - UX Research Methods in the Development of Marginalized Characters

TINA CHAN (she/her) User Researcher on Rainbow Six Siege, Ubisoft Montreal Authenticity workshops (AWs) leverage consultants with topic-specific expertise or lived experiences to improve the realism and sensitivity of designs that represent under-represented identities in gaming. Examples include developing characters who are living with disabilities, from indigenous communities, or who are not cis gender. While strategic AWs facilitate genuine co-creation of characters with communities they represent, and present opportunities for cultural leadership, AWs can also build Games UXR influence into the pipelines of atypical partners like Art, Narrative, and Marketing. This talk walks through methods and learnings from designing three playable characters for Rainbow Six Siege (an operator with prosthetics, an indigenous pilot, and a trans woman engineer) at Ubisoft Montreal, and then finalizes with a toolkit to conduct AWs. After this talk, the audience should be able to 1) Identify where Games UXR methods can improve the authenticity of game content; 2) Articulate the importance of authenticity to production teams with historical examples in the games industry; and 3) Leave with a toolkit to start running AWs