Wiberg M. - The Interaction Society[c] Practice, Theories and Supportive Technologies (2005)(en)

122 Jegers & Wiberg

Chapter V

Learning While

Playing:

Design Implications for Edutainment Games

Kalle Jegers

Umeå University, Sweden

Charlotte Wiberg

Umeå University, Sweden

Abstract

This chapter reports on the initial results of a study conducted in the project FunTain. The main purpose was to identify general guidelines/ implications for edutainment games, in order to guide designers of such games as they often lack in design guidelines. Usability evaluations were conducted on an edutainment game in order to find usability problems. These findings were analyzed and used as input in focus group meetings, held with joint teams of game designers and HCI experts. The outcome of the focus groups was a proposal of a list of ten general design guidelines. Findings indicate that users had problems in understanding the underlying model for the game as well as identifying the knowledge related content. Experts, further, gave comments about feedback problems and different

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types of consistencies. Some of the implications from the findings are guidelines for earning and loosing points, scoring and performance feedback and game object characteristics.

Introduction

Currently, both research and practice show a great interest in studying and developing ways to use computers in various forms to support and enhance interactionbetweenhumans.Althoughtheissueofhuman-to-humaninteraction by use of computers is of great relevance and importance, we still must not forget about the interaction between humans and computers. New factors and aspects, not previously grasped by the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) discipline, are becoming recognized as important in the interaction between users and technology. Aspects such as emotions, experiences and entertainmentaremoreandmorefrequentlyconsideredwhendesigninganddeveloping new computer applications in many different areas.

Entertaining experiences is one of these new aspects that today are becoming in focus not only in traditional areas of entertainment, but are currently used in previously non-entertaining contexts as a mean to improve products and user/ consumer experiences. Examples of this could be found both in the physical world (i.e., restaurants and theme parks) but also in computer contexts such as on the World Wide Web and in different kinds of software (Pine II & Gilmore, 1999; Wolf, 1999). The application of entertainment in previously nonentertaining environments and contexts opens up new research questions, as entertainment is applied and used with purposes beyond creating plain amusement and fun for the user. One of the areas where entertainment is applied with purposesbeyondjustcreatinganamusingexperienceistheareaofedutainment, where entertainment is used in combination with education in order to create a motivatingandsuccessfulenvironmentforlearning.

Adams et al. (1996) describe edutainment as a blend of education and entertainment, pursued in multimedia software. The description, or definition, indicates that the two major dimensions of importance in edutainment is some kindofpedagogy(education)andsomekindof“fun”orentertainingexperience (entertainment). Edutainment is therefore one example where research on new appliances of entertainment in previously non-entertainment contexts may be conducted.

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124 Jegers & Wiberg

Considering the definition of the edutainment concept (as a blend of entertainmentandeducation),wemightconcludethatdesignofedutainmentincludesthe design of both entertainment and educational aspects in a design artifact. This maycausesomedifficulties.Thepedagogicalaspectsthatareofimportancefor the educational part of the artifact may in some cases be in opposition to the aspects of importance for the entertainment part of the artifact. There seems to be a need for some kind of trade-off to be made in order to achieve a good result in the design of both the entertainment and the education in the artifact. A parallel could be made to Nielsen’s (1999) discussion about content and package of the content in a web page design context. According to Nielsen (1999) the users of a web page are focused on the content of the page and consider the user interface, or package, as a barrier through which they reach for the content they want. Despite a cool, sizzling or ”killer” interface or environment, the usability of a web page would be negatively affected if the content of the web page fails to deliver something to the user (Nielsen, 1999). Therefore, Nielsen (1999) concludes that content is king.

Thereisaneedfordesignguidelinesandimplicationswhendesigningedutainment under these circumstances. This paper reports from an initial study conducted for the purpose of providing guidelines/implications for design of edutainment games (an instance of edutainment), performed within the FunTain project, a joint project between HCI academics and game design practitioners. The purposeofthischapteristoreportthefindingsfrominitialusabilityevaluations on an edutainment game in order to provide design implications for design of edutainmentgames.

Qualities of an Edutainment Artifact

In related work, suggestions of aspects that are of major importance for educational software and multimedia can be found. These suggestions should be of importance also in design of edutainment artifacts such as edutainment games.

Adams et al. (1996) suggest that multimedia products for educational purposes should be designed with the following aspects in mind: effective learning, effective teaching, effective communication of the content and effective use of technology to achieve the previous aspects. In order to achieve effective learning, the artifact, or product, should be simple (explain topics in terms for the user’s already known knowledge), clear (define topics in their entirely) and unambiguous (distinguishing specific topics from others). Effective teaching,

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they argue, will be achieved by highlighting perspectives needed to master the topic and by providing appropriate feedback mechanisms to the learners. They suggeststhateffectivecommunicationcouldbeachievedbypresentingmaterial so as to increase the learner’s understanding of the topic in a monotonically fashion. Technology should then be used to ensure the previously mentioned aspects, and not to obscure them. In design of multimedia for education, the usual human factors must be addressed, and the technology should bring together the benefits that the different media provide.

Lin et al. (2001) highlight the possibility to pass control of learning sequences from the program designer to the learner in web-based teaching. Good education software should be active, not passive, in that the learner should be doing something actively and not watching something passively. Adams et al. (1996) seem to agree with this recommendation, and they conclude by suggesting that active engagementby interactionwith multimediacan increase the attention span for learners with positive effects, such as customization of pace and learning style to suit the individual learner’s specific needs.

The suggested aspects and factors above all tend to focus on the education dimensionofedutainment.Whendesigningedutainmentgamesthisdimension is of great importance. However, if the game itself is not considered entertaining, it is likely that users will quit playing the game, with no educational experience as a result. Further, the above suggestions give high-level implicationswithnospecificguidancefordesigningedutainmentgamesspecifically.In HCI there is a long tradition of development of design guidelines and overall these are very much on a micro level and specific on the technology itself.

The Edutainment Game Prototype

The game is called “Laser Challenge” and was designed in order to educate the player/user about appliances of laser technique. No specific knowledge about the laser technique was required for playing the game, but the user was supposed to be inspired by the game to learn more about lasers. The game followed a linear, platform metaphor, and consisted of four episodes with increasingdifficultyintheinteractiveparts.Themainthemewasintendedtobe non-violent and the basis was that the user should collect CDs to give a party. The player controlled and steered a character on the screen in order to collect CDs and avoid “enemy” objects in the game environment, presented in the

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shape of skateboard kids who were trying to steal the CDs from the player’s character. Further, the user got points when answering questions about lasers that were presented in the game. Below, some screen shots from the game are shown.

Picture 1. Pre-game instructions screen (the overall goals and objectives of the game is described, as well as the basic game controls)

Picture 2. User controlled character to the left, a spinning question mark that leads to a question that must be answered by the user, a CD that must be collected in order to complete the game and a number (250) that represent “free” points to score

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Learning While Playing 127

Picture 3. Character has touched a spinning question mark, and a question box is shown (The question is multiple choices, and deals with the topic of laser. Correct answer gives the user a high amount of points.)

Picture 4. Character, numbers representing points to score, CDs to collect in order to achieve the game objectives and the antagonist of this game level (the Skateboarder)

Evaluation Method

When evaluating educational software, learning and usability need to be considered as interacting in order to avoid superficial evaluation (Jones et al., 1999).Giventheinteractionbetweenlearningandusability,usabilityevaluation

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128 Jegers & Wiberg

methodsshouldbewellsuitedforevaluationofedutainmentartifactsinthecase presented here, since the methods would capture both design implications (Karat, 1997) and potentially also the interaction between usability and learning. Therefore, an approach based on evaluation methods from the usability discipline was used for the purposes of identifying empirical design implications for edutainment games. This approach would then potentially address the learning aspects and, most importantly for the focus of this case, obtain implications for design.

Previous findings in the related area of interactive entertainment evaluation (Wiberg, 2001a) reveals that evaluation of entertainment websites based on methods from the usability discipline, and user testing in particular, tend to provide findings that are focused on basic usability problems concerning navigation, design of menu buttons, etc. This implies that more subtle factors such as immersion, absorption and engagement, all potentially important to both entertainment and education, are difficult to grasp with the user testing method (Wiberg, 2001b). Several studies reveal that usability inspection methods, such as Design Walkthrough (e.g., Karat, 1997), Cognitive Walkthrough (e.g., Lewis et al., 1994) and Heuristic evaluation (e.g., Nielsen, 1993, 1994) in many cases identifies problems overlooked by user testing, but also that user testing may identify problems overlooked in an inspection (Nielsen, 1994). In this study, we therefore used a combination of evaluation methods including both user testing and inspection methods. A combination of user testing and inspection would provide a broad picture of the important aspects and issues at hand, and seems to be a fruitful approach when generating a foundation for deriving design implications. In order to refine the results provided by the user testing and inspection method and to generate a set of empirical design implications, the focus group method was used. In practical terms, a focus group is a collection of people gathered together at one time to discuss a topic of interest for the researcher. The explicit use of the group interaction provides the researcher with data and insights that would be less accessiblewithouttheinteraction(Sullivan,1994).Bycollaboratingtheresults from the user testing and inspection method in a focus group session, the intentionwastocreateasetofdesignimplicationsofimportanceforedutainment games, which is the major purpose of this chapter.

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Learning While Playing 129

Participants

Subject	Age	Gender	Computer		Computer	Comment
			literacy		gaming
			(1=Novice,		literacy
			5=Expert)		(1=Novice,
					5=Expert)
1	25-30	Female	3	1		Researcher HCI
2	25-30	Female	5	5		Researcher HCI
3	50-60	Male	3	1		Engineer
4	20-25	Male	4	4		HCI analyst and
						lecturer

A total number of five (5) subjects were invited to participate in the user testing, of which four (4) actually participated.

The subjects performed the test one at a time, and each test took about 30 minutes in all. The user tests consisted of three parts:

•10 minutes of free surf with Think Aloud

•10minutesofWalkthrough,performedbythetestsubjectincollaboration with the test leader (collaborative evaluation)

•10 minutes of post-interaction interview

In the first part of the session, the subjects played the game without any specific task to solve or instructions to be carried out. They were asked to verbalize their thoughts throughout the interaction, and they finished the session when they wished to do so. In the second part, the subjects performed a Walkthrough of the whole game prototype in collaboration with the test leader. Different aspects of the game were discussed, and the subjects were asked to give their opinions about specific features and parts of the design. They were also able to express any thoughts and comments they wanted to share. The postinteraction interview gave the subjects an opportunity to give comments and thoughts on general aspects of the game, the interaction and the performed test procedure. Here, the subjects could develop or refine their opinions and ideas from the previous parts of the test, and the test leader could follow up on issues that needed to be clarified.

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130 Jegers & Wiberg

Expert Walkthrough

In the design walkthrough, or here called expert walkthrough, the experts investigated and collaborated with the game prototype and made comments on possible problems or design improvements. The comments were written down anddiscussedinthelastpartoftheevaluation,thefocusgroup.Theinstructions were very brief, and the experts had a large degree of freedom in the evaluation procedure. In a large extent they relied on their personal experience and opinionsintheirevaluations.

Focus Group

When the User tests and Expert Walkthrough parts were finished, the HCI researchers and test leaders from the empirical evaluations, as well as the game designers, performed a joint focus group meeting. In the focus group, the findings from the previous parts of the study were reported and discussed. The firststepinthisprocesswastoanalyzeandcategorizethedifferentfindingsfrom both the empirical and the expert evaluations into problem areas or groups. From the grouped findings, the participants constructed a more general picture of the reported issues in the prototype. This picture was then used to generate a number of implications for the next step in the overall design process; design implications.Thegeneralpicturewasthoroughlydiscussed,withfocusonhow the problem picture could be reconstructed into guidelines or implications that designers would benefit from.

Each group of problems in the picture were discussed in terms of: which part(s) of the game prototype design that was related to the problems, what kind of moregeneralusabilityissuetheproblemscouldbeinterpretedasdemonstrating different aspects of, and eventually how the essence of the usability problem expressed by the problem group could be formulated into a guideline or an implicationfordesign.

Since the study was performed as a collaborative part of the process of designing the edutainment game, implications were kept at a level that was considered to be meaningful for the overall design process in terms of guidance for designers when conducting re-design. That is, implications that would be possibletouseasmeaningfulinputtothedesignersinthenextstepofthedesign process.

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Learning While Playing 131

Usability Problems Identified

In order to highlight the research process, some of the usability problems identified are stated below. These are kept short, with the purpose to pinpoint the overall picture of what occurred. Most of the usability problems in the examples occurred both in the expert walkthroughs as well as in the empirical usability evaluations, however not in all the empirical sessions.

Expert Walkthroughs

•It was unclear which actions the player should perform in order to gain pointsinthegame.Strangequestionmarksandothermovingobjectswere confusing, and searching after hidden objects that gave points was fruitless.

•It is not obvious what “enemies and dangers” the player should be aware of in the game. What other characters and objects are really dangerous in the game? What actions and objects should be avoided?

•The skateboard kid seemed somewhat dangerous, however it was not clear at all how and in what ways he could harm the player’s character.

•Overall, feedback problems occurred in the game. When feedback was expected (when different actions suggests feedback to be expected) it did on many occasions not occur.

Empirical Usability Evaluations

•A lack of interest (from the test players) in reading initial instructions results in frustration later in game when events, objectives and actions become difficult to interpret and understand.

•Loss of only some game points as a result of an action was confused and mixed up with a total loss of all points earned, which led to unnecessary (and unmotivated by the game) disappointments among the test players.

•The music in the game is not connected to the actions taking place in the game, which confuses players, as it does not highlight levels of danger (which would be consistent with other games).

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