Dambuster Studios returned to Nottingham's Confetti Institute of Creative Technologies last week to give two talks as part of their annual Industry Week event. The Industry Week event is designed to provide students with a taster and real insight into the most exciting and competitive creative industries in the world including video game production, film & TV VFX, audio design, screenwriting and VR.

This year's line up of speakers included guests from Framestore, BBC Radio 1, The Mill, PlayStation, Facebook, Splash Damage and Nottingham born TV and film actress Vicky McClure (This is England, Line of Duty)

Steve Thackray from our Gameslab team presented a talk on User Research and the journey to his current role via working in retail at Game, joining Dambuster Studios as part of the Quality Assurance team and then making the leap into the field of user research. To illustrate his current role in more detail, Steve presented information on some of the methods our Gameslab team use in their day to day work:

• Behavioural observations
• Analysing game telemetry
• Post play surveys
• Interviews

Steve also presented real world examples of where user research has made a quantifiable, positive difference to a user's overall experience of games such as Homefront: The Revolution, Agents of Mayhem and the upcoming Metro: Exodus.

Ben Parbury from our engineering department presented a talk about working as part of a team. Giving the students advice about what to expect from the industry and an introspective look at how they can quickly be a valuable and effective team member. Ben conclued his presentation by encouraging the students to actually finish (and not just start) portfolio work and to get applying for exciting careers.