Evaluation of online social network games usability using verbal protocol analysis

With a rapid increase of online social network game users, many online games companies have built and developed different interesting games for user entertainments. Regardless of the wide proliferation of these interesting games, there is one significant factor tied with these games have been ignored or may have not been massively addressed and overhauled in its complete form, which is, usability. Therefore, Usability of online social network game is significantly important to ensure the success of interaction and the play between users and their favorite games. Due to the increase numbers of users play social network games according to AppData, we selected CityVille and FarmVille games as a subject of this research. In this paper, we used protocol analysis technique to test and evaluate how usable these games according to users´ perspectives based on their level of experience. The result of this research based on the carried out experiment presents that; (1) novice users are having trouble at the initial stages of the game;(2) picking items from a selected category is incoherent; and (3) instructions of the games are misleading.