Growing into an expert in Player Insights and Research
Time for Growth – with Laura Hummel
At Tactile, we encourage our team members to take ownership of their own development and drive their upskilling to match the needs of the company, as well as their own aspirations.
The desire to upskill oneself is crucial for the success of our business, so having team members with that mindset is what we believe is part of pushing us forward.
We chatted to our Player Insights Lead, Laura Hummel, to learn more about how growth journey from user support, through user research and into player insights.
Tactile: Hi Laura, can you tell us a little bit about what your role was when you started at Tactile?
Laura: I started at Tactile in the summer of 2019 as a Player Care Manager for the User Support team, which at that time was just Celesta and me; a small but mighty duo! 😀
Tactile: How have you grown and developed in your journey at Tactile since then?
Laura: Starting in Player Care, I began dipping my toes into User Research by interviewing players and speaking with them directly, while still focusing on my support role. Over time, that gradually turned into a full-time User Research position.
A few years later, User Research and User Support were brought together under the larger umbrella of Player Insights. That was when I stepped into the role of Player Insights Lead, helping guide both the User Support and User Research teams and giving the company a broader, more connected view of player insights across Tactile.
Tactile: How did the transition into a User Research role officially happen?
Laura: During my time as a Player Care Manager, Tactile quickly recognized the need to strengthen the connection between our players and the game developers. Since the Player Care team had already built relationships with many of our most active players, the transition felt very natural.
It started with me reaching out to players and having video chats with them about their experiences in our games. Those interviews turned out to be incredibly valuable, and from there, the ‘player insights’ part of the role kept growing until it grew into a full User Research team.
I was very lucky to work with some wonderful mentors here at Tactile, who helped train and guide me into the wide world of User Research, while also giving me the opportunity to learn on the job through courses and tools.
Tactile: How have you been developing as a Player Insights specialist since then? What does your daily routine look like?
Laura: Going from Player Care to User Research to Player Insights Lead has definitely been a bit of a roundabout journey; it feels like a full-circle moment. Player Insights is actually the perfect combination of the skill sets I’ve built along the way.
My role is a bit unusual in that I essentially work for the other teams at Tactile, and that’s something I really love. No two days are ever quite the same. One day, I might be testing a new game concept with players, and the next I might be designing a study to better understand our current player base for a particular game.
What I enjoy most is getting to be a bit of a detective: helping teams find answers that are not always obvious from game data alone, and bringing the player perspective into the bigger picture.
Tactile: What do your development plans look like going forward?
Laura: For User Research, development really means staying up to date with new and improved methodologies, tools, and ways of working. Games User Research is still a relatively young field within research, so it feels especially important to stay connected with peers and keep up with how the field is evolving. AI is also at the forefront of almost every conversation right now, so a big area of focus is exploring and testing which tools can genuinely support our work in meaningful ways.
On the Player Insights side, one of my personal goals is to become more independent and confident with the ‘slightly scary’ in-game data side of things! 😅 A lot of my User Research naturally focuses on qualitative data, so I’d really like to continue building my knowledge of how to combine in-game data with research findings to make our studies even stronger. At the moment, I still happily lean on our Data Analysts/Scientists when needed, but the goal is definitely to grow more confident in my own abilities there.
Thank you for the lovely chat, Laura 💜
