Abstract:

The games are designed to be interesting, exciting, fun, challenging and engaging. All these processes are very important if we look at the game as an educational tool, because all of the above mentioned features helps to learn and promotes inner motivation to learn, discover, explore and understand more. The principles that promote an individual's involvement in the game are: clear rules that must follow, clear goals of the game, clear process and steps to be taken.

Considering the theories of psychology about motivation, goal setting and engagement, one can observe that learning new skills and using them is both challenging and exciting.

The aim of the article - to summarize the findings of the previous researches about the possibilities of using the game as a teaching aid, the pedagogical-psychological aspects of its influence and determine the pedagogical-psychological criteria of the testing of a didactic game.
Research methods - theoretical: literature review, the empirical: analysis of experts’ opinions. According to the used method, the design of the study is qualitative and non-experimental.

The topic of board games is interest to the author in two ways - as a form of design - their graphics, content, mechanics, organization, ergonomics and, of course, the benefits of their use in education, advertising and entertainment. Together with students, prospective designers, new games are created within the framework of study projects, their approbation is performed. Therefore, it is important to pay attention to previous researches and experience of professionals. This is in line with the design thinking process which consisting of several stages: empathize - define - ideate - prototype - test.

The research carried out allows to conclude that the most important pedagogical-psychological criteria for testing of games are:
(1) compliance of the goals of the game with the aims of the learning process;
(2) match of the game to the age of the pupils;
(3) involving as many players as possible in the game;
(4) match the content of the game to the content of the lesson;
(5) the game must contain a learning problem, the content of the game should include new facts, concepts and phenomena as much as possible;
(6) The game should develop transversal skills - critical thinking and problem solving, creativity, self-directed learning, cooperation.

Keywords:

Board game, education, psychology, expert method.