Implementing Viewer Interactions within Game Streams Designing for Active Participation

Abstract

Twitch is a leading platform within online streaming, specifying in the streaming of games. Until the launch of Twitch Extensions in the autumn of 2017 - interactive overlays and panels providing a possibility for viewers to take a bigger part in the streaming experience - the viewing experience had mostly been static. This master’s thesis treats game streaming from the viewers’ perspective with the aim of finding design aspects in the form of a set of guidelines to consider when developing Extensions, along with examples of implementations in the form of interactive prototypes, in order to motivate and incorporate active participation. Until recently, the area of screen interactions in combination with live streams has been quite unexplored. Not only does the area lack previous research executed in order to produce best findings within the development of the implementations, but the mental models of the users’ in question will have to be taken into consideration, or even changed. Because of the rawness of the area and its implementations, users don’t typically expect to be interacting with the aspect of the elements on the screen. The project was executed through an iterative design process,which spanned over three iterations including idea generation, prototyping, testing and analyzing of results. User tests were performed on both interaction designers and Twitch viewers alike. The set of final initial guidelines were focused solely on extension creation which were based on what had been learned throughout the iterations of redesigns, user tests and feedbacks. In the end, the project resulted in both a developed set of final prototype concepts, working as examples of implementation within the area, along with a set of guidelines to be considered suggestions for the future development of these types of interactive interfaces.