The UX of Avatar Customization

Avatar customization is a feature that is offered in many computer and video games. Customization options are presented to users via Character Creation Interfaces or CCIs. CCIs differ greatly between games, independent of genre, with regard to the quantity and quality of customization options available. In addition, the way in which these options are presented to users differs from game to game. Research on avatar customization is typically focused on user-avatar identity or self-representation. In general, we have found that the User Experience (UX) of avatar customization has been greatly overlooked in academic literature. As such, we look to existing research on UX in order to propose how its methodologies may be used to study the impact of CCI affordances on player experience in games.

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