Architecture and Evaluation Design of a Prototypical Serious Game for Business Information Visualization

Poorly visualized business reports may lead to wrong decisions caused by incomprehensible or misleading data. However, many companies still do not strive for adequate business information visualization (BIV), which may be due to a lack of knowledge about how to achieve it. To support managers in avoiding the pitfalls of incomprehensible reports, we are currently developing a serious game that helps players to learn about guidelines for adequate BIV. In this so-called “Dashboard Tournament”, players compete across several minigames that address specific BIV guidelines. The aim of this paper is to provide an understanding of the prototype’s architecture and to propose an experimental design for its evaluation. Researchers and practitioners may hence increase their understanding of how to design and evaluate serious games in the domain of business and information systems engineering

prototypical implementations ; working packages in project phase II

In this technical report, we present the concepts and first prototypical imple- mentations of innovative tools and methods for personalized and contextualized (multimedia) search, collaborative ontology evolution, ontology evaluation and cost models, and dynamic access and trends in distributed (semantic) knowledge. The concepts and prototypes are based on the state of art analysis and identified requirements in the CSW report IV

10 simple rules to create a serious game, illustrated with examples from structural biology

Serious scientific games are games whose purpose is not only fun. In the field of science, the serious goals include crucial activities for scientists: outreach, teaching and research. The number of serious games is increasing rapidly, in particular citizen science games, games that allow people to produce and/or analyze scientific data. Interestingly, it is possible to build a set of rules providing a guideline to create or improve serious games. We present arguments gathered from our own experience ( Phylo , DocMolecules , HiRE-RNA contest and Pangu) as well as examples from the growing literature on scientific serious games

Gamification Analytics: Support for Monitoring and Adapting Gamification Designs

Inspired by the engaging effects in video games, gamification aims at motivating people to show desired behaviors in a variety of contexts. During the last years, gamification influenced the design of many software applications in the consumer as well as enterprise domain. In some cases, even whole businesses, such as Foursquare, owe their success to well-designed gamification mechanisms in their product. Gamification also attracted the interest of academics from fields, such as human-computer interaction, marketing, psychology, and software engineering. Scientific contributions comprise psychological theories and models to better understand the mechanisms behind successful gamification, case studies that measure the psychological and behavioral outcomes of gamification, methodologies for gamification projects, and technical concepts for platforms that support implementing gamification in an efficient manner. Given a new project, gamification experts can leverage the existing body of knowledge to reuse previous, or derive new gamification ideas. However, there is no one size fits all approach for creating engaging gamification designs. Gamification success always depends on a wide variety of factors defined by the characteristics of the audience, the gamified application, and the chosen gamification design. In contrast to researchers, gamification experts in the industry rarely have the necessary skills and resources to assess the success of their gamification design systematically. Therefore, it is essential to provide them with suitable support mechanisms, which help to assess and improve gamification designs continuously. Providing suitable and efficient gamification analytics support is the ultimate goal of this thesis. This work presents a study with gamification experts that identifies relevant requirements in the context of gamification analytics. Given the identified requirements and earlier work in the analytics domain, this thesis then derives a set of gamification analytics-related activities and uses them to extend an existing process model for gamification projects. The resulting model can be used by experts to plan and execute their gamification projects with analytics in mind. Next, this work identifies existing tools and assesses them with regards to their applicability in gamification projects. The results can help experts to make objective technology decisions. However, they also show that most tools have significant gaps towards the identified user requirements. Consequently, a technical concept for a suitable realization of gamification analytics is derived. It describes a loosely coupled analytics service that helps gamification experts to seamlessly collect and analyze gamification-related data while minimizing dependencies to IT experts. The concept is evaluated successfully via the implementation of a prototype and application in two real-world gamification projects. The results show that the presented gamification analytics concept is technically feasible, applicable to actual projects, and also valuable for the systematic monitoring of gamification success

Developing Serious Games with Integrated Debriefing - Findings from a Business Intelligence Context

Serious games (SG) are recognized in severaldomains as a promising instructional approach. When itcomes to the field of Information Systems, however, theyare not yet broadly investigated. Especially in businessintelligence and analytics, a literature review indicates theabsence of SG for proper report design. Such games,however, seem beneficial since many business reportssuffer from poor business information visualization (BIV).To address this issue, the scope of the study is twofold:first, the paper presents a SG that aims to foster learningabout BIV. Second, it evaluates this SG in a laboratoryexperiment, comparing it to a more conventional instruc-tional approach (i.e., presentation) and testing two differentversions of the game: One version integrates debriefinginto the game itself, whereas the other version uses clas-sical post hoc debriefing. Results indicate that it is favor-able to integrate debriefing into the game in terms ofmotivation and learning outcomes. In the vein of designscience research, the authors thus intend to contribute auseful artifact as well as a novel design principle for thisinstructional approach: Integrating debriefing into SG

Validation and Evaluation

In this technical report, we present prototypical implementations of innovative tools and methods for personalized and contextualized (multimedia) search, collaborative ontology evolution, ontology evaluation and cost models, and dynamic access and trends in distributed (semantic) knowledge, developed according to the working plan outlined in Technical Report TR-B-12-04. The prototypes complete the next milestone on the path to an integral Corporate Semantic Web architecture based on the three pillars Corporate Ontology Engineering, Corporate Semantic Collaboration, and Corporate Semantic Search, as envisioned in TR-B-08-09

Teaching the Digital Transformation of Business Processes: Design of a Simulation Game for Information Systems Education

The ability to manage business processes in the context of the digital transformation is a key competency that should be addressed in Information Systems (IS) education. One possibility for teaching this competency is through simulation games, but the current ones lack a dynamic view on changing business processes induced by the digital transformation. In this paper, we present the design of a simulation game to teach the digital transformation of business processes within IS education. The game simulates the transformation of a bike manufacturing company to a bike-sharing provider, in which students have to manage changes in the production process in teams during different transformation phases. We argue how our game supports central learning objectives for teaching the aforementioned topic and show the benefit of our game design by running a pilot test with students from IS education using the Systems Usability Scale to evaluate the utility of our implementation

SHARPP Games for the Education Prevention and Reversion of Chronic Diseases

Prevalence of chronic diseases has become a serious problem in our society. These illnesses are commonly caused by dietary and lifestyle risk factors and are hard to cure completely. However, behavioral changes such as adopting a healthy diet and lifestyle are effective in reducing chronic conditions. In this research, we propose to build games that could support the Sustainable transformation of chronic patients in a Holistic and Adaptable manner using Real-time, Precise, and Persuasive (SHARPP) principles, processes, systems, and technologies. This research leverages wearable information technologies and chronic disease studies to design games that interweave virtual worlds with the real world. It not only supports patients to form healthy habits that prevent and revert chronic diseases but also helps individuals to balance various life dimensions

An Embodied Tutoring System for Literal vs. Metaphorical Concepts

In this paper we combine motion captured data with linguistic notions (preliminary study) in a game-like tutoring system (study 1), in order to help elementary school students to better differentiate literal from metaphorical uses of motion verbs, based on embodied information. In addition to the thematic goal, we intend to improve young students’ attention and spatiotemporal memory, by presenting sensorimotor data experimentally collected from thirty two participants in our motion capturing labs. Furthermore, we examine the accomplishment of tutor’s goals and compare them to curriculum’s approach (study 2). Sixty nine elementary school students were randomly divided in two experimental groups (game-like and traditional) and one control group, which did not undergo an intervention. All groups were tested in pre and post-tests. Even though the diagnostic pretests present a uniform picture, two way analysis of variance suggests that the experimental groups showed progress in post-tests and, more specifically, game-like group showed less wrong answers in the linguistics task and higher learning achievements compared to the other two groups. Furthermore, in the game-like condition the participants needed gradually shorter period of time to identify the avatar’s actions. This finding was considered as a first indication of attentional and spatiotemporal memory’s improvement, while the tutor’s assistance features cultivated students’ metacognitive perception

Developing a methodological framework for adopting digitalization for deconstruction planning

Wastes generated from construction and demolition (C&D) activities account for a major proportion of urban solid wastes. The large amount of C&D waste generated are still being largely landfilled or downcycled worldwide. Aging built assets without proper C&D planning is a major cause of wastes not being efficiently diverted for circular use. How waste sorting could be properly planned in the early stages, not only for new construction, but also deconstruction projects is critical to minimizing C&D wastes. As there is a large amount of aging assets without digital files or even no drawings, developing a digital-driven approach to effectively estimate and categorize C&D wastes would be essential for, not just early-stage deconstruction planning, but also the development of a circular economy on C&D wastes. This study is first based on a thorough literature review of existing studies of applications of digital technologies to C&D waste diversion (WD). Limitations of existing studies are evaluated, such as the lack of digital twin approach for deconstruction. Then a methodological framework is established aiming to adopt digitalization for C&D WD, specifically for existing facilities under deconstruction planning. Based on the current work, future study would apply the methodological framework with real-world case studies to validate and test its effectiveness with initiated prototypes. Longer-term work can extend from the current framework to Internet-of-Things and Artificial Intelligence. REFERENCE