Examining Focused Case Studies’ Effects on Software Design
Poster Number
2B
Research or Creativity Area
Engineering & Computer Science
Abstract
We would like to present our findings about how a small study can impact the development of an educational game. We ran a two-person pilot study on Noisrucer, a student-developed puzzle game that helps computer science students better understand recursion, a key computer science concept.
Each aspect of the game is introduced in a series of tutorial levels. These levels serve to not only walk players through the rules and goals of the game, but also to begin to teach key aspects of recursion. Further, we designed several levels to specifically teach backwards flow, a specific topic of recursion in which computation happens after the recursive call. We took extra care to design these levels in a manner which stayed true to the way in which programmers utilize recursion in coding settings, so that players would be able to walk away with an understanding which could be used in their daily lives.
Two participants were chosen via convenience sampling to demo the tutorial levels and the backward flow focused levels of the game. Before playing the game, we asked each participant to respond to a short survey to acquaint ourselves with their skill level. We recorded each participant’s behavior and commentary when appropriate and useful. We closely monitored each participant's interactions with the application to examine any misconceptions, or areas in which users were unclear about how to complete an interaction. Observations and our interpretations of their commentary were recorded in our GitHub repository. After playing the game, we asked participants to respond to another survey asking questions about their experience interacting with the game. These questions measured ease of use and the degree of fun players have. We also asked questions about what skills were learned, and measured these skills using a modified recursion concept inventory.
Purpose
We chose to survey pilot users to learn what should be changed in our software to increase usability. We chose to conduct this study to help us delve into how we can improve the user experience for future players, so they can better learn key recursion concepts.
Results
We gathered extremely valuable feedback from new, unbiased players regarding the user interface in Noisrucer. For example, we found that the participants were often unsure about how the branching commands worked. This is a key aspect of our game, so it was extremely useful to discover this aspect was unclear to new players.
Our team is planning to use this new knowledge to edit future versions of the game, in order to achieve the highest degree of ease of use possible. This will allow future Noisrucer players to better learn recursion without having to tinker with the game, or guess how any of the functionality is working.
Significance
Quality software, especially in education, relies on ease of use but user interfaces can be difficult to design. The results of our study can be used to better design educational games, which will reduce development costs and allow superior software to be developed.
Location
Don and Karen DeRosa University Center (DUC) Poster Hall
Start Date
27-4-2024 10:30 AM
End Date
27-4-2024 12:30 PM
Examining Focused Case Studies’ Effects on Software Design
Don and Karen DeRosa University Center (DUC) Poster Hall
We would like to present our findings about how a small study can impact the development of an educational game. We ran a two-person pilot study on Noisrucer, a student-developed puzzle game that helps computer science students better understand recursion, a key computer science concept.
Each aspect of the game is introduced in a series of tutorial levels. These levels serve to not only walk players through the rules and goals of the game, but also to begin to teach key aspects of recursion. Further, we designed several levels to specifically teach backwards flow, a specific topic of recursion in which computation happens after the recursive call. We took extra care to design these levels in a manner which stayed true to the way in which programmers utilize recursion in coding settings, so that players would be able to walk away with an understanding which could be used in their daily lives.
Two participants were chosen via convenience sampling to demo the tutorial levels and the backward flow focused levels of the game. Before playing the game, we asked each participant to respond to a short survey to acquaint ourselves with their skill level. We recorded each participant’s behavior and commentary when appropriate and useful. We closely monitored each participant's interactions with the application to examine any misconceptions, or areas in which users were unclear about how to complete an interaction. Observations and our interpretations of their commentary were recorded in our GitHub repository. After playing the game, we asked participants to respond to another survey asking questions about their experience interacting with the game. These questions measured ease of use and the degree of fun players have. We also asked questions about what skills were learned, and measured these skills using a modified recursion concept inventory.
