A Game Creation Tool which Supports the Development of Writing Skills: Interface Design Consideratio

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A Game Creation Tool which Supports the
Development of Writing Skills Interface Design
Considerations

• Katy Howland, Judith Good and Ben du Boulay
• IDEAs Lab, Department of Informatics
• University of Sussex
• Brighton, BN1 9QH, UK
• K.L.HowlandJ.GoodB.du-Boulay_at_sussex.ac.uk

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Talk overview

• Background
• Teacher Consultation
• External Representations Theory
• Interface Design Considerations
• Future Work

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Background Motivation

• Concerns about childrens writing skills
• (Fisher et al., 2002, Goodwyn, 2002)
• Lack of motivation (Younger et al., 2005),
  particularly between the ages of 11-14 (Goodwyn,
  2002)
• Apprehension (Mulholland and Robertson, 2001)
• Potential for game creation to help
• Can be very motivating
• Can provide a creative outlet for children who
  have difficulty with traditional writing tasks
• (Good and Robertson, 2006)

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• Allows young people to create their own
  interactive stories in the form of computer games
• Provides targeted support for the creative
  process of game design
• (Robertson and Howells, In press Robertson and
  Nicholson, 2007)
• Has been used in the classroom as a stimulus for
  creative writing activities -World Builder
  Project

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Background Game Creation as Writing

• Creating a good game involves
• Creating realistic characters
• Developing interesting interactive plots
• Writing compelling dialogues, descriptions and
  introductions.
• (Bateman, 2007, Handler Miller, 2004, Ince, 2007)
• Being aware of your audience
• Reflecting on your creation
• (Good and Robertson, 2006)

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Background Problem

• NWN2 toolset makes commercial quality game
  creation possible
• BUT interface representations encourage a focus
  on other aspects of game creation, e.g. level
  design and combat related aspects of game.
• Can redesigning the interface encourage
  development of writing skills within game
  creation without changing the fundamental nature
  of the task and losing motivational factors of
  task?

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Teacher Consultation on Writing Skills

• Four English teachers were interviewed to test
  the viability of the project and gather their
  opinions on game creation as a potential activity
  for developing writing skills
• They were asked to identify
• Any writing skills which could be developed
  through game creation
• Any alterations to the toolset interface which
  could encourage further skills development

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Teacher Consultation on Writing Skills

• All four teachers felt that there was clear
  potential for game creation to support
  development of writing skills. Particularly in
  terms of
• Motivation
• Relevance to culture
• Different level of feedback peers care!
• Ownership and responsibility

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Teacher Consultation on Writing Skills

• Composition Skills
• Using language and structure to achieve
  particular effects and appeal to the reader
• Writing for creative, persuasive and
  informational purposes
• Understanding how meanings are changed when texts
  are presented through different media
• Audience Awareness
• Anticipating reader (player) reaction and being
  sensitive to an unknown audience
• Reflection
• Planning and drafting
• Critical analysis of self and others work

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Teacher Consultation on Writing Skills

• Is it writing?
• Yes
• Maybe depends on the context
• A stilted form mainly conversation and
  character based
• More (alphabetical) text please!
• Introductory screens, descriptions, diaries
• Creating characters, scenes and objects by
  writing a description rather than selecting a
  model.
• By writing about it they have to think about
  it!

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External Representations in Educational Software

• The Match-Mismatch Hypothesis
• (Gilmore and Green, 1984)
• Where a representation highlights a certain type
  of information, tasks using that type of
  information will be easier to perform than those
  requiring other types of information
• The NWN 2 toolset makes it easy to add a variety
  of items to an area and set up fights, because
  this is the information the interface highlights
• It is harder to create an interactive branching
  plot because this information isnt explicitly
  represented, so the user has to hold this as a
  mental representation

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External Representations in Educational Software

• Cognitive Offloading
• Trying to hold a mental representation in working
  memory over a period of time can lead to
  cognitive overload, something which learning
  environments need to provide support for(Mayer
  and Moreno, 2003)
• It will be necessary to support users in building
  complex plots by providing a representation of
  narrative structure to support cognitive
  off-loading.

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External Representations in Educational Software

• Easier is Not Always Better
• When the aim is to help students to learn, having
  an interface which make certain tasks too easy
  can work against this aim (Brna et al., 2001).
• In the NWN toolsets the user can create a
  character simply by dragging a character model
  title from a list into the 3D area.
• The task is only made easy by hiding the
  complexity which the user needs to engage with if
  they are to develop skills in creating
  characters.

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External Representations in Educational Software

• Experiential and Reflective Cognition
• Norman distinguishes between experiential and
  reflective cognition (Norman, 1993)
• Reflective cognition requires the ability to
  store temporary results and use those results in
  further thought processes.
• External representations can facilitate
  reflective cognition by allowing more complex
  chains of reasoning to be built up.

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External Representations in Educational Software

• Interfaces can Support Thoughtless Action
• Being able to drag in a generic character to the
  game world turns a task which should require
  considerable reflection into a purely
  experiential task.
• Svendsen (1991) concluded that whilst direct
  manipulation interfaces can be very user-friendly
  they can actually hinder problem solving if they
  are supportive of thoughtless action.
• Distinction between selection, which is quick and
  easy and can be done without deep thought, and
  composition, which requires considerable thought
  and effort.

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Interface Design Considerations

• Concentrating Reflective Thought on the Right
  Activities.
• Limited amount of deep reflective thought
  available it should be directed to tasks which
  are pertinent to the educational aims of the
  software
• Saving the game shouldnt be a reflective task
• A complex scripting language is an undesirable
  way of creating in-game events (unless the aim is
  to teach coding skills)
• (Howland et al., 2007)

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Interface Design Considerations

• Concentrating Reflective Thought on the Right
  Activities.
• Where the aim is to develop specific writing
  skills the interface should encourage deep
  reflective thought when it involves the practice
  and development of those skills (which are
  naturally composition rather than selection-based
  tasks)
• Other aspects of game creation should be carried
  out easily through selection to avoid distraction
  and unnecessary cognitive effort.

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Interface Design Considerations

• The Importance of Text
• Initial teacher consultation suggested that
  writing in text should play a greater part in the
  game creation process
• Writing skills are not limited to text-based
  composition, but being able to express ideas
  through text is an important skill
• Writing through text is a very reflective
  process, which involves formulating thoughts
  fully, so it is a good candidate for interaction
  which encourages reflective cognition

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Interface Design Considerations

• The Importance of Text
• It is crucial however, that the key benefits of
  game creation are not lost the motivating nature
  of the activity, and the opportunity it provides
  for children with poor literacy skills to express
  themselves creatively and engage in creating
  complex narratives
• Demonstrate parallel relationship between text
  and audio and visual representations of writing
  components. Potential to bring out a key skill -
  understanding how meanings are changed when texts
  are adapted to different media

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Interface Design Considerations

• Granularity of activity
• Users will need to undertake some detailed,
  low-level work, such as creating a character,
  scene or story event from scratch.
• Reflective cognition requires the ability to
  store temporary results and use those results in
  further thought processes.
• So, to allow practice of higher level skills such
  as plot structuring it should be possible to
  re-use already created story aspects as narrative
  building blocks.

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Future Work

• Next Steps
• Learner-Centred Design process underway will
  culminate in creating and testing of low fidelity
  prototype
• Recently undertaken design work with target users

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Future Work

• Tool created will function as a complementary
  add-on to Adventure Author, and will be evaluated
  in a school-based study with a view to
  discovering
• whether game creation activities can support the
  development of 11-14 year old pupils writing
  skills
• how interface representations of a game under
  creation affect the skills which can be developed
  whilst creating games
• whether game creation can be geared towards
  specific skills development without losing the
  motivational affordances of the task

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Questions