ENHANCING ATTRACTIVENESS OF EDUCATIONAL GAMES BY INVOLVING END USERS IN THE DESIGN PROCESS – A CASE STUDY

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) hold significant challenges and opportunities for our educational system. Use of these technologies in educational programs is taking up rapidly and numerous challenges arise along that uptake. Educational content providers, such as publishers, are struggling to determine to what extend these instruments can be used, and what formats are most successful.
Gaming as an interactive way of learning is one of those technological opportunities. It is rapidly gaining ground in the educational context. The question arises how to increase the effectiveness and the adoption of these instruments.

A promising design method to gain more relevance and adoption amongst users is by adopting co-design as a strategy of concept and scenario development. The focus of co-design lies in the involvement of designers, developers, the customer and end users (both learners and teachers) in all stages of the development of products and services (Sanders E. & Stappers P.J., 2008). The underlying rationale is that end users – in this case students and teachers of the subject Social Studies/Civic Capacities – usually have trouble voicing their demands for a future product, because of the abstract and hypothetical nature of the future product at this stage in the design process. In stead end users are expert on their personal experiences and customs related to the subject at hand – in this case learning, teaching, gaming, and the subject of the game which is personal finance and social security.

In this paper we present a case in which an educational game is developed using this method of co-design, and we present the effects this design method had on the content and format of the game.

In two sessions with students of Vocational Educational Training (VET) a series of scenarios were developed, in which the students presented their views on key elements of an educational game on personal finance and social security issues. The students were briefed on game design and on the context in which this instrument was to be used. The resulting scenarios and the personal experiences of the design team attending the co-design workshop guided the design team in the development of a game scenario. Key elements like the game play, the rule set, the styling, the wording and the thematic setting were influenced by the students input. Subsequently the design was reviewed by students and teachers in order to iterate the process of co-creation and evaluation of the concept.

The result of this co-creative approach is a game scenario which is attractive to students and teachers. An additional result is a high level of commitment and support of the users in the following development phases of this project.

Based on this case study the paper demonstrates an educational game concept designed around end user experiences rather then educational requirements, and evaluates co-design as an effective approach to interactive educational content development.