Examination of the Relationship Between Customizable Heads-up-displays, Difficulty, and Player Satisfaction

This paper documents a study of the relationship between heads up display (HUDs) customization and player performance. Additional measures capture satisfaction and prior gaming experience. The goal of this study was to develop a framework on which future Human Systems Engineering studies could create games that are tailor made to examine a given area of interest. This study utilized a two-by-two design, where participants play a two-dimensional (2D) platformer game with a mechanic that incentivizes attention to the HUD. This study successfully developed a framework and was moderately successful in uncovering limitations and demonstrating areas for improvement in follow-on studies. Specifically, this study illuminated issues with the low amount of usable data caused by design issues, participant apathy, and reliance on self-reporting data collection. Extensions of this study can utilize this framework and should look to recruit beyond crowdsourcing platforms, collect more diverse data, reduce participant effort, and address other considerations that were found during execution.