1234567 of Gamification

1 aim: FUN
2 approaches: learning through game playing vs learning through game making
3 ways to engage: tactical, strategic or narrative immersion
4 types of players: Killer, Achiever, Explorer and Socializer
5 steps of gamification: gameplay, feedback, narrative and space
6 elements of game: goal, rules, interaction, challenge, feedback and story.
7 +/- 2

Basic UI design principles

I attended a talk of Dr Alex Mitchell from NUS on UI and UX Design

Mental models and interaction
= Players build up a mental model of how a UI works
= Players use this to decide how to interact.

= Mental models are developed through interaction
= Inaccurate mental model can lead to problems

Design principles (from Don Norman)
1. Affordances and visibility (what and how can I do it?)
== Connection between core mechanic and player
== Remember, player will be doing this over and over
2. Feedback
== What happened when I did something?
== Was the action successful? What should I do next?
3. Mapping
== How did my action relate to what happened?
== Helps the player figure out how to play to win...
4. Consistency and Convention
== Make sure interaction is consistent throughout the game, and across the platform
== build on conventions that your players know, e.g. how to select menu items
5. Focus of attention
== Players will be intently focused on the action in the game
== Take advantage of this when designing the UI

How to validate serious games

A PhD student of mine has done expert validation on his boardgame. After that he asked me whether what he has done were actually appropriate or not. Herewith my response:

Technological Validation
The technological validation should focus on the playability of the game. The fundamental question they address is: Is your game really fun to be played like other games? To address this issue, the constructs or aspects of validation should focus on the six structural elements of the game (Prensky, 2007): game goal, game rules, interaction, challenge (or problem), feedback and narrative (optional, depending on game genre. The first four elements form the gameplay of the game, so when you report in the thesis, the gameplay validation should cover all these four elements. Feedback is where learning actually happens, should the validation should focus on whether the learnability and helpfulness for playing the game (not necessarily learning the contents of lessons) actually work. The technological expert should be directed to assure the learning curve in the game world is not too steep. The learning should be maintained or balanced along the flow channel (see Cziksentmihalyi, 1989) and avoid boredom (the game is too easy to play) and anxiety (the game is too difficult to play).

Apart from the game design elements mentioned above, the technological expert validation may also cover technical aspects (whether there are bugs, particularly on the physical game board, pieces and other apparatus) and artistic aspects (graphics, printing, etc) of the game. With reference to your validation criteria, herewith my suggestion:

a) interface (game materials) - should cover the interaction here, and be part of the gameplay; game materials should be discussed separately)

b) gameplay (game mechanics) - should cover four structural elements here 

c) balance (should be related to flow channel)

d) interaction (should be discussed together with interface)

e) decision and analysis (should discuss feedback design, alongside with learnability and helpfulness)

f) rules (part of the gameplay)

G) Game materials and apparatus (discuss the technical and artistic aspects)

Content Validation
For content validation, the key focus should be the intended learning outcomes or ILOs. The content experts must assure that the ILOs in the game is actually  aligned to a specific syllabus or curriculum. Next, the constructive alignment (Biggs & Thang, 2007) of three components in ILOs must be correctly aligned to three structural game elements. In particular, the observable behaviors must be aligned probably to the game challenge; the conditions of learning must be aligned to the game rules; and the expected degree of achievement in learning must be aligned to the feedback design of the game. Only if the game elements are correctly aligned to ILOs then the experts would be directed to validate other criteria you listed because your study is involving edumetric tests, as opposed to attention, motivation, satisfaction, engagement, etc; unless you want to change your research questions.

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