Alexandra Holloway, Sri Kurniawan
12/10/2010 09:00 AM
Computer Engineering
Human-centered design (HCD) is often considered a central, largely unquestioned, tenet of good practice for product design. However, while various manuscripts had been published on HCD methods for generic interactive systems, few discuss HCD method for interdisciplinary projects; specifically, serious games (designed for a primary purpose other than pure entertainment). Applying HCD to the design of a video game, we soon found that there were missing links in the reviewed methods. Through the development of our serious game, an educational computer game to prepare first time parents for childbirth and labor, we propose a new HCD method We show how iterative design, evaluation, and testing must take into account the interdisciplinary requirements of creating serious games. It is necessary to receive inputs from all of the different fields of experts before initiating the design stages: the thematic experts as well as the game design experts and learning experts.
