1. [Publications](/index.php/publications) 2. Studying Esports Competition: Piloting Methodology for User Studies During Tournaments # Studying Esports Competition: Piloting Methodology for User Studies During Tournaments ![](/sites/default/files/styles/wide/public/publications/siggraphtalks24-46-fig1.jpg?itok=9K_x--9p) Designing experiments is a well-studied, complex task with many conflicting constraints. In experimental user studies, the overarching goal is to gain understanding of how a system affects users by manipulating independent variables (eg, an interface's configuration) while measuring dependent variables (eg, the user's performance). Achieving this goal requires significant compromise between many conflicting sub-goals including internal validity, that the effects on dependent variables were caused by manipulations of independent variables, not other uncontrolled variables; external validity, that the findings are generalizable enough to have meaning outside the lab; and feasibility, that the experiment can be performed without unreasonable time and cost. ## Authors Arjun Madhusudan (NC State University and NVIDIA) [Josef Spjut](/index.php/person/josef-spjut) [Ben Boudaoud](/index.php/person/ben-boudaoud) [Joohwan Kim](/index.php/person/joohwan-kim) Benjamin Watson (NC State University) ## Publication Date Thursday, July 18, 2024 ## Published in [ACM SIGGRAPH Talks](https://dl.acm.org/doi/proceedings/10.1145/3641233) ## Research Area [Esports](/index.php/research-area/esports) [Human Computer Interaction](/index.php/research-area/human-computer-interaction) ## External Links [ACM Digital Library](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3641233.3664349) [HTML paper](https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3641233.3664349) ## Uploaded Files [Author Preprint](https://d1qx31qr3h6wln.cloudfront.net/publications/S2024_Talk__esports_tournament_methodology.pdf "Open file in new window")625.84 KB ## Copyright Copyright by the Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from Publications Dept, ACM Inc., fax +1 (212) 869-0481, or . The definitive version of this paper can be found at ACM's Digital Library .