Final Product

So, in the end there is response bias and a need for easy accesability of testing methods. A questionnaire with 75 questions will feel like a chore. On the other hand. a game that takes about 10 mintues to compile a single aspect of your personality is much faster.

Therefore, the end product was a pair of games that could in theory, predict a subject’s personality by using different variables that will record player actions during the gameplay session. Out of the pair, each was dedicated to a single emotional aspect of the big five. These aspects are Conscientiousness and Neuroticism or emotional stability. The reason for choosing these two aspects of The Big Five was because the research behind these two in the original paper are quoted by the researcher, Lewis R.Goldberg, as very accurate but other ones need more research.

Potentially, if more research was done to create solid assessments for Openness, Extraversion and Agreeableness, then they could be converted into gamified tests. Which at the end of the day, could be sold as a complete solution package towards companies that are currently using assessments like these to test their potential or current employees. This could also be offered to game developers in order for them to better understand and implement gameplay features.

Furthermore, the statistical tests of comparing the two data sets, that is, the questionnaire data against the the data obtained by the game gave positive results. It seems the methodology of using game to assess different aspects of personality does work.

The Evaluation

Conscientiousness

The game used to determine conscientiousness will be a very abstract traffic control sim wherein the player needs to ensure the traffic’s flow by regulating traffic lights. The longer the user stays engaged with lesser errors the higher score in conscientiousness. So, the overall objective is to get a car from one side to the other without letting them crashing into each other. Therefore, when the player gets more than 4 cars to the other side without crashing them a multiplier starts. A multiplier is an incremental number which increases as the user repeats the same process that started the multiplier. The duration of this multiplier is also recorded. Apart from that there is also two special vehicles i.e. an ambulance and a police car. All of these different game mechanics act as variables in determining different sub parameters constituting Conscientiousness.

Neuroticism or Emotional Stability

The game that I will be using to assess emotional stability will be a very casual minimalistic game. The core objective of the game is that the player is a white dot and the enemies are black dots. The player has to avoid the black dots and use an occasional power up mechanic. Depending on various induced conditions in-game the variable player actions would be taken into account in order to determine the sub parameters listed below in Table 2. There will also be a new mechanic which will be introduced during the hardest stage of game.

Initial Research

For this research, I will be using the Big Five model and its principles as a foundation. The Big Five model was proposed in the research paper “An Alternative "Description of Personality": The Big-Five Factor Structure.” (Lewis R. Goldberg el at. 1990) In this paper the Big Five is represented in the form of an acronym OCEAN. This acronym stands for openness(O),
conscientiousness(C), extroversion(E), agreeableness(A), neuroticism or emotional stability(N).

The parameter for openness describes a person’s interest in unique experiences, including exploring brand new places, acquiring knowledge, and creatively. This parameter is then further expanded upon with several other sub parameters which include perspective, curiosity, interest in knowledge, creative thinking, individuality and adaptability.

The second parameter of conscientiousness refers to the individual’s competency and productivity orientation. This parameter includes striving, diligence, organisation, dependability, attention to detail, efficiency and self-discipline.

The third parameter of extroversion is referring to an outward and interactive personal orientation. The sub parameters include, sociability, self-disclosure, approachability and orientation.

The Fourth Parameter of agreeableness evaluates the general good-naturedness and likeability of an individual. The sub parameters that exist under this variable include, trust, authenticity, willingness to compromise, egoism, kindness, aggressiveness, competitiveness, dominance and charm.

Finally, the parameter of neuroticism or emotional stability is ability of overall calmness and emotional security. The sub parameters include emotional reactivity, resiliency, anger command, impulse command, self-confidence, reaction to stress, independence, assertiveness and optimism.

The Solution and The Reasoning

The Big Five

Roles: UX Researcher and User Testing

The Challenge

Design a game that is fun and engaging user experinece while it deduces the user's personality. This is a gamification of the principles of "The Big Five" originally proposed by Lewis R. Goldberg. The users playing the game will be participating in a research wherein, their every movement and actions will be recorded by the game in order to predict the user's personality. This data will then be compared to a personality assessment questionnaire used to obtain personality score prior to playing the game.

Time to break it down (Inner Monologue Time)

A different game to assess each aspect of personality model.
The game should be very easy to play but at times should induce a bit of challenge in order to record data that is needed.
The play time per game shouldn't be more than 5-10 minutes. As this might result in fatigue.
The game will be built for Android as playing on the tablet would the easiest medium of all.
Finally, use variables to record and save data in a text file with user's name on it.
Then use this data to perform a statistical analysis to compare the data between the questionnaire and the game.

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Case Study

The entire questionnaire that is based on the big five model consists of 75 questions in total. Depending on subject’s consistency the total number of actual questions can go from 25 and increase up to 50. Also, there is an extra set questions in the end which can go up to 25 and they act as follow up questions to ensure that the personality is assessed as accurately as possible.

At the end of it, based on the score achieved in each parameter the final result would be summarised, categorised as strengths, potential strengths and limitations. There will also be a section which will include advice on tackling those limitations.

But as with any test that is heavily dependent on a questionnaire wherein the subject has answer on a spectrum, it results in data that can be inaccurate due to personal bias and marginal errors. This flaw of a questionnaire has been researched extensively in several papers. Namely, “Faking it: social desirability response bias in self-report research” (Thea F. van de Mortel et al. 2008) and “Sensitive Questions in Surveys” (Roger Tourangeau et al. 2007). These two papers talk about how social desirability and misinterpreting sensitive questions can result in response bias and marginal errors.