Abstract:

In the trend of integrating board games into education, teachers would design board games for classroom instruction, in hope of bringing their instruction closer to the goal of the curriculum. However, little research has explored their design results with a focus on the key element of board game design—imaginations.

The subjects in this study were 25 educators and students who participated in “Board Game Design & Popular Science Workshop”. The goal of this workshop was to lead educators through a multidisciplinary collaboration design of board games suited for classroom teaching using a user-centered design method—the scenario approach. The workshop was carried out every Saturday for four weeks, with each session lasting eight hours. In addition to instructions on implementation, lectures were given. A demonstration of board games was also held to allow test play of the games by reviewers and the public.

As staff of the workshop, the authors observed and recorded participants’ performance and group discussion. At the end of each session, participants were asked to fill out an Individual Imagination Characteristics Questionnaire. A total of six tests were administered. Based on the two-factor imagination model and time-series analysis method, this study explored the connections between imagination development and design results in each team’s board game design process. The results could serve as a reference or guideline on board game design for teachers.

Keywords:

Board game, scenario approach, multidisciplinary collaboration design, imagination.