TEN HEURISTICS TO EVALUATE THE USER EXPERIENCE OF SERIOUS GAMES

Yıl 2016, Cilt: 8 Sayı: 2, 209 - 225, 01.12.2016

L. Fitchat D. B. Jordaan

Öz

The potential of serious games to promote effective learning has been established
in the literature. However, designing effective serious games that strike a balance
between being entertaining and at the same time instructional, remains elusive.
This research turns to the field of human-computer interaction (HCI) to
investigate the aspects that are most influential to the player’s experiences with
serious games. From this, HCI principles to evaluate the user experience of
serious games are identified and described. User experience (UX) refers to how
individuals perceive and respond to using interactive systems such as serious
games. Since UX is regarded as subjective in nature, this study was conducted
using interpretative phenomenological analysis, which focuses on idiographic
inquiry. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with five participants after
they were given time to play a serious game. The serious game, titled StoryTimes,
aims to teach the user the multiplication tables by employing memory association
techniques in a fun and innovative way. StoryTimes was developed as part of this
research to investigate how HCI principles are applied during the development
cycle of a serious game. The data from the interviews were analysed qualitatively
to determine which aspects of the serious game were regarded as the most
important from the participants’ point of view. The findings indicate that players
of serious games prefer mobile gaming platforms and have certain expectations
regarding how subject content is integrated into video games. It also reveals the
design challenges associated with the attention spans and very diverse natures of individual players. These aspects were recast in the form of ten heuristics that could be applied when evaluating the UX of serious games. Designers of serious games can use these heuristics during the development process to create a learning environment that is both effective and fun

Anahtar Kelimeler

Serious Games, Human-Computer Interaction, user experience

Kaynakça

• Annetta, Leonard A (2010), “The 'I's' have it: A Framework for Serious
• Educational Game Design”, Review of General Psychology, Vol. 14, No. 2, pp.105. Annetta, Leonard A, Richard Lamb and Marcus Stone (2011), “Assessing Serious
• Educational Games”, (in: L. Annetta and S.C. Bronack-Eds., Serious Educational Game Assessment: Practical Methods and Models for Educational Games, Simulations and Virtual Worlds), Rotterdam: Sense. Bartle, Richard A (2004), Designing Virtual Worlds, Indianapolis: New Riders.
• Biggerstaff, Deborah and Andrew R Thompson (2008), “Interpretative
• Phenomenological Analysis (IPA): A Qualitative Methodology of Choice in Healthcare Research”, Qualitative Research in Psychology, Vol. 5, No. 3, pp.214- Bower, Gordon H (1972), “Analysis of a Mnemonic Device”, American Scientist, Vol. 58, No. 5, pp.496-510.
• Burford, Sally and Sora Park (2014), “The Impact of mobile tablet devices on human information behaviour”, Journal of documentation, Vol. 70, No. 4, pp.622
• Carter, Marcus, John Downs, Bjorn Nansen, Mitchell Harrop and Martin Gibbs (2014), “Paradigms of Games Research in HCI: A Review of 10 Years of
• Research at CHI.” In Proceedings of the 2014 annual symposium on computer- human interaction in play, edited by Lennart E. Nacke and T. C. Nicholas
• Graham, 27-36. Toronto, Ontario: ACM. Desurvire, Heather and Charlotte Wiberg (2009), “Game Usability Heuristics
• (PLAY) for Evaluating and Designing Better Games: The Next Iteration.” In Online communities and social computing: third international conference, edited by A. Ant Ozok and Panayiotis Zaphiris, 557-566. San Diego: Springer. Dix, Alan, Janet Finlay, Gregory D Abowd and Russell Beale (2004), Human
• Computer Interaction, Harlow: Pearson Education. Engl, Stephan and Lennart E Nacke (2013), “Contextual Influences on Mobile
• Player Experience - A Game User Experience Model”, Entertainment Computing, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp.83-91. Hassenzahl, Marc and Noam Tractinsky (2006), “User Experience - a Research
• Agenda”, Behaviour & information technology, Vol. 25, No. 2, pp.91-97. Horsley, Kevin (2012), Unleash the Power of your Memory: Tools to Improve your Business & your Life, Pretoria: Kevin Horsley.
• Jİrgensen, Kristine (2012), “Players as Coresearchers: Expert Player Perspective as an Aid to Understanding Games”, Simulation & gaming, Vol. 43, No. 3, pp.374-390.
• Korhonen, Hannu and Elina MI Koivisto (2006), “Playability Heuristics for
• Mobile Games.” In Proceedings of the 8th international conference on human- computer interaction with mobile devices and services, edited by Marko Nieminen and Mika Röykkee, 9-16. Espoo, Finland: ACM. Law, Effie Lai-Chong and Xu Sun (2012), “Evaluating User Experience of
• Adaptive Digital Educational Games with Activity Theory”, International journal of human-computer studies, Vol. 70, No. 7, pp.478-497. Malone, Thomas W (1980), “What Makes Things Fun to Learn? A Study of
• Intrinsically Motivating Computer Games”, Thesis - PhD, Stanford University. Nielsen, Jakob and Rolf Molich (1990), “Heuristic Evaluation of User Interfaces.”
• In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems, edited by Jane Carrasco Chew and John Whiteside, 249-256. Seattle, WA: ACM. Patton, Michael Quinn (2002), “Two decades of Developments in Qualitative
• Inquiry a Personal, Experiential Perspective”, Qualitative social work, Vol. 1, No. , pp.261-283. Pinelle, David, Nelson Wong and Tadeusz Stach (2008), “Heuristic Evaluation for
• Games: Usability Principles for Video Game Design.” In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, edited by Mary Czerwinski, Arnie Lund and Desney Tan, 1453-1462. Florence, Italy: ACM.
• Prensky, Marc (2001), Digital Game-Based Learning, New York: McGraw-Hill.
• Prensky, Marc (2005), “Computer games and Learning: Digital Game-Based
• Learning”, (in: Joost Raessens and Jeffrey Goldstein-Eds., Handbook of computer game studies), Cambridge: MIT Press. Rieber, Lloyd P. (1991), “Animation, Incidental Learning and Continuing
• Motivation”, Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 83, No. 3, pp.318. Rosas, Ricardo, Miguel Nussbaum, Patricio Cumsille, Vladimir Marianov, Mónica Correa, Patricia Flores, Valeska Grau, Francisca Lagos, Ximena López and Verónica López (2003), “Beyond Nintendo: Design and Assessment of
• Educational Video Games for First and Second Grade Students”, Computers & Education, Vol. 40, No. 1, pp.71-94. Saldaña, Johnny (2013), The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers, London: Sage.
• Shiratuddin, Norshuhada and Syamsul Bahrin Zaibon (2011), “Designing User
• Experience for Mobile Game-Based Learning.” In Proceedings of 2011 international conference on user science and engineering, edited by Nor Laila Md
• Noor, Steve Benford, Alistair Edwards, Haryani Haron and Fauzi Mohd Saman, 94. Selangor, Malaysia: IEEE. Smith, Jonathan A, Paul Flowers and Mike Osborn (1997), “Interpretative
• Phenomenological Analysis and the Psychology of Health and Illness”, (in: Lucy Yardley-Ed., Material Discourses of Health And Illness), London: Routledge. World Memory Sports Council (2016), Grandmasters, http://www.world- memory-statistics.com/grandmasters.php, [Accessed 18.08.2016]
• Zaibon, Syamsul Bahrin and Norshuhada Shiratuddin (2010), “Heuristics
• Evaluation Strategy for Mobile Game-Based Learning”, In 6th IEEE international conference on wireless, mobile and ubiquitous technologies in education (WMUTE) edited by Ulrich Hoppe, Roy Pea and Chen-Chung Liu, 127-131. Kaohsiung, Taiwan: IEEE. Zyda, Michael (2005), “From Visual Simulation to Virtual Reality to Games”, Computer, Vol. 38, No. 9, pp.25-32.