An iPad Brainstorming Tool for the Development of Serious Games
Requirement elicitation is one of the early phases in the development cycle for any software. Serious Games is no exception;a thorough problem analysis is needed before starting to design a Serious Game, in particular before defining the scenario for the game. However, currently there is no structured approach and few guidelines on how to tackle this phase. Developing games and also serious games is mainly considered as a highly creative process. Although, developing games and serious games requires a considerable amount of creativity, the development of those games could benefit from a more structured and guided development, for two main reasons: to reduce the development cost and to avoid failures.
The purpose of this thesis is to provide support for the requirement elicitation for serious games. As, in general, many different types of people (i.e. with different backgrounds) are involved in the development process of a serious game, we aim for a simple and easy to use tool. We therefore opted for a visual tool on a (iPad) tablet.
This thesis starts with an investigation on visual tools that are currently available on an iPad tablet that can guide a user who is not fully familiar with the problem domain of games definition. It then provides a proposal for capturing the decision model using a feature-based model and presents a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to assist the users in the requirements capturing.
In the second part, the thesis provides details on the implementation of the prototyped “GuideaMaps” application. This native iOS app runs on iPad devices and aids the user in collecting the required information and helps him with the decision-making process.
Thevisual tool gently forces different people (with different background) involved in the development of a Serious Game (e.g. against cyber bullying) to reflect on the goals, characteristics and main principles of a new to develop serious game. The tool can be used in meetings and documents and visualizes the actual decisions taken by the group.