Journal Entry # 9: Reflection

The process of designing and developing a game is not easy, especially when designers are working on the process by themselves. According to Rowland (1993) the design process depends on the designer and what he or she wants to design. This means that the product or artifact to be designed will reflect the designer’s abilities and skills. In this study, the designer was not only working conceptualizing the idea of the game and how it would work, but actually developing it. Therefore, some limitations of this game are indicated as below:

• Time

Due to time constraints, the designer did not have sufficient opportunities to work in depth on other possible strategies and game aspects that could be approached for this simulation game.

• Programming skills

The programming skills are essential when developing an online game. Mulligan and Patrovsky (2003) discuss about the need of balancing the creativity aspects of design over the technical skills, since there is usually a gap between the intended development and the actual one. Regarding this fact, the game developed lacks more interactivity and simulations because the designer had limited skills to develop the program.

• Subject Matter Expert

Since my knowledge about the content of this game was limited, I depended a lot on my client to help me to understand and realize the subject of the game. Unfortunately, since we had different schedules and my client had never experienced the process of the design and development, it was hard to maintain a regular pace of communication regarding the project.

Although there were some constraints, I believe this experience was very helpful for me since I learned a lot of new things such as preparing a healthy meal, watching out for portion size of food intakes and also I learned more about the technical part, which is not my strengthens - Action Script.

References

Rowland, G. (1993). Designing Instructional Design. Educational Technology Research and Development, 41(1), 79-91.

Mulligan, J., & Patrovsky, B. (2003). Developing Online Games: An Insider's Guide. New Riders Publishing.

Journal Entry # 8

The showcase night was a great and fun experience. However, I have to confess I was little nervous about my project and people’s response to it. I was really surprised to see that people enjoyed my project and had fun playing. Some people gave me more advices and feedback if I would like to continue working on this project.

Also, I really enjoyed looking through other people’s project. I noticed that a lot of people were very creative with their project and I think they did very well in their final product.

Regarding my project, I plan to keep working on, even though I’m not required. The reason why I would like to do this is because I know that the subject that I’m treating in my project is very delicate and it needs a lot of work. I know that the time constraint and my skills were a limitation for this project. However, if I don’t have any requirements to be completed, I’ll have more time to work on this on my own pace.

According to Salen & Zimmerman (2005), in the design of games, there are three parts that defines this process such as: context, designer and meaning. Regarding this fact, I believe that the role of the designer is essential for the process of developing a game. During the process of the developing my game, I realized that designing a game is not an easy task since I have faced problems not only during the design process, but also during the development phase. Another thing that I realized while reading this article is the importance of engaging players in the context. However, the context needs to be very well-elaborated. Barab et al (2007) have pointed in his study the relevance of balancing the context/narrative with the content; otherwise learners will be deeply devoted to the context, failing to appreciate the subject and content of the activity.

Regarding these points, I think my project has a specific context, but it lacks in the narrative part (story folds). Since this was only a prototype, I have been taking notes of every single detail that I should make to the project in the future.

This semester was not my best, but I’m really glad that I was able to have my project done for showcase.

Reference

Barab, S., Sandler, T., Heiselt, C., Hickey, D., & Zuiker, S. (2007). Relating narrative, inquiry,
and inscriptions: Supporting consequential play. Journal of Science Education &
Technology, 16(1), 59-82.

Salen, K., & Zimmerman, E. (2005). Game design and meaningful play. In J. Raessen & J. Goldstein (Eds.), Handbook of computer game studies (pp.60-79). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Service hours # 3

I committed to design logos for the Studio community. So far, I have developed one logo for the studio wiki. For this graphic illustration, I spent 2 hours working on. Here is the final result:
Organization: Studio
Contact: Dr. Michael Orey

Service hours # 2

I developed some graphic illustration for one of the 6210 team. The graphic illustration was a sequence of pose of a whale. I spent 3 hours and 30 minutes working on this illustration. Here is the graphic illustration:
Organizations: Imaginative Designs (6210)
Project Manager: Carrie Bishop

Desk Crit Received #7

From: ki-hyun Koo
Date: 04/23/08

I think that your project concept is very useful and creative. Because it deals with health issues that we all are mindful. I myself also try to calculate calories when I eat Italian food.
I think that game approach would be on of the easiest and most comfortable way to learn the subject. I guess learners would understand the subject easy compared with other strategies (ex> book, homepage, etc)


However, I would like to suggest you few points after experiencing this program. Hope my suggestions would be helpful to you.

1) To me, colors of the above picture look a bit dark, and the objects are not quite related to Italian food, or preparing meal (ex> cook, or person who preparing his/her meal in the kitchen) will be better.

2) I think there are many words with same emphasis in this page, so it’s hard for me to recognize what is the important in the page. How about using bullets or images to improve the readability of the page?

3) There isn’t “back” button, so learners can’t see previous page as they proceed the program. So, if the learners want to know “instruction” part (the first page of this program,), they have to finish all the pages and start again.

How about making navigation menu? next, back button >

4) Since I have no idea of making Italian food, learners like me may need more information what is the best way to cook Italian food. I think the learners also need more information, or tips for this program. How about presenting specific examples? For example, explain advantages or disadvantages for each one when we cook Italian food.

5) After completing this program, the learners were to get feedback. I think it’s a great idea. I would however give more specific feedbacks such as good advices or so.

Desk Crit Received #6

From: Amy Wright
Date: 04/17/08

Given to Daisy at the dress rehearsal. As I went through the module, I noticed that the nutritional informaiton did not come up immediately and people may not realize that it is available if they don't put their cursor over the box so you might want to just have it up versus having it appear. A back button would be nice so people can change their choices after seeing they are not making good choices, but I know that requires more difficult/in depth programming. The serving size is a little confusing or portion size so you may want to rephrase that so people understand how they should be counting the calories. I think providing people a reference of what an oz. is would be nice since most people don't look at their food and think of it in that quantity. Its hard to visualize how much is 1 portion or 2 ozs per serving size. You may want to include some information about how that is listed on the nutritional information of foods and what it all means.Most people don't know how to read and interpret it.

I really enjoyed playing with it and it surprised me the number of calories in one kind of cheese or bread versus the others.

Thanks for sharing,

Amy

Journal Entry 7: Last week :-s

Final week, I can’t believe this semester is almost over and I’m about to get my project done :) I’m really surprised with the amount of desk crits that I received and all the comments and positive feedback that I have got so far. I’ll be posting here pretty soon two more desk crits that I have gotten and also my service hours. I have developed the logo for the studio wiki and also whale illustrations for one of the 6210 teams.

During this past week, I have collected real photos of the foods to add to my project. Some of the desk crits that I have received pointed out the importance of having real photos or appropriated graphics to this project. Also, I have created a character to my game simulation. This character will be introduced in the first screen of the game and he’ll serve as guide and reference to players.

One thing that I believe that I won’t be able to accomplish by tomorrow is to make all the changes that people requested. For example, it took me more than I have imagined to collect real photos of the food, especially regarding copyright issues. Some of the photos I took them myself and I don’t think they came out that good.

Also this past week, I read Dr. Rieber’s article: “Seriously Considering Play: Designing Interactive Learning Environments Based on the Blending of Microworlds, Simulations, and Games”. I really enjoyed reading his article. I think he put a lot of effort in this literature review, gathering ideas and main concepts about games, simulations and microworlds. In this article, he defines educational simulation as a system that let players/users experience the results of actions or decisions through feedback generated by the simulation (Rieber,1996). I think his definition of simulation defines very well what I’m trying to accomplish with my project.

I’ll keep working on it, trying to make as good as possible for tomorrowJ!! I know for sure that this project will definitely need more work in the future in order to become a full game (I couldn’t do it due to time constraint and lack of AS skills).

Reference:

Rieber, L. P. (1996). Seriously considering play: Designing interactive learning environments based on the blending of microworlds, simulations, and games. Educational Technology Research & Development, 44(2), 43-58.

Desk Crit Received: #5

From: Audra Edwards
Date:04/13/08

Hi, Daisy!

Here is some feedback about your game. We discussed some of these items Thursday night.

I really like the design of your game and think that it is a neat way to help someone learn about preparing a meal for a diabetic. I have no knowledge about how to prepare a balanced meal for someone with these special needs, so I found the game to be particular interesting and informative.

The introduction is very appropriate and gives good information about how to participate in the activity. You might want to add a statement about having a piece of paper and a pencil handy to help with calculations.

As we discussed, when the game begins, it would be good to have the information for each food already displayed. It is fun, though, to watch the information appear dynamically! Maybe you could add an instruction that says to mouse over each food for the information and then click on the food to choose it. Remember that I suggested you change the words "portion size" to "number of servings" since this is the typical language used on food labels. I like how the calories are calculated automatically based on the number of servings. If someone accidentally leave the serving size blank, the calculation says NaN- maybe add a message here in case that happens. It may be helpful to put something in the directions about clicking on the total calories button to calculate- someone may not realize that they need to do this and they may just continue on to the next section.

I don't know how difficult this would be, but it would be neat to have an area on the screen that shows the choices that have already been made. For example, when the learner moves on to the bread screen, the information about the meat they chose is still displayed somewhere.

The last suggestion that I have is to not only have the calories calculated for each section, but also the carbohydrates. This is because the game specifies that the calories and carbohydrates are important is preparing a meal for a diabetic. It wouldn't hurt to also include the total amount of fat since that information is included in the nutrition information.

I hope that you find my feedback helpful. I enjoyed your project and think that you have constructed a great educational game!

Audra
PS Please see the attachment for some editing feedback.

Desk Crit Received: #4

From: Sunny (HeuiSeon Lim)
Date:04/12/08

Hi! Daisy!

First of all, I love your concept of the project since I am concerned with how much calories that I intake by the food that I eat. Also, Italian is my favorite dinner menu, but it takes lots of calories and carbohydrate! Therefore, your project will benefit not only people who concern with diabetes, but also most of people like me who want to try not to take more calories and carbohydrate than they should.

I am very impressed with the features such as menu selection, different portion size, especially; the function of auto calculation at the end is very useful! I can’t imagine how much effort and many hours and you spent get all the function working properly.

Here is my suggestion for just little things that nice to have.
1. More Selection of the food: I guess it is always nice to have more choices but you already have most popular items for each section.
2. Some kind of feature that make more noticeable about the different calories of the foods.
3. Some improvement on graphic in general would be nicer. 

Again, you did a very impressive job to make everything working properly. I can’t wait to see you

Desk Crit Received: # 3

From Donna Washington
Date: 2/12/08

Daisy,

I wanted to send you this deskcrit of your Prepare Your Meal project after using in during our Studio Dress Rehearsal. I thought your idea for the activity is definitely delightful, which I believe is one of the requirements for the Blue Sock award. I liked how you provide information regarding the food choices and then give the opportunity for the learner to choose based on comparing and contrast. I also thought how you provide immediate feedback for the learner is important. The user knows immediately if their meal choice is appropriate for the purpose of the activity.

I do have a couple suggestions that you may consider. The first is possibly having a place dedicated to place written step by step directions for the learner. You may remember I had to restart and choose my meal again because I didn't realize I needed to click submit ( I believe that was the name of the button). That would make the activity a little more learner directed, but I'm pretty sure you had that covered already. The only other suggestion I would make is to perhaps have a little content prior to the activity on how one goes about choosing a healthy meal. Maybe some dietary suggestions on the amount of carbs, fats, or sugar a food should contain. It's just a thought, so use what you can and discard the rest.

All in all I enjoyed what you have developed. I believe it's an activity we all could benefit from.

Thanks for the opportunity.

Donna W.

Desk Crit Recived 2

From Scott Foster
Date 04/10/08

Click on the following link to see his Desk Crit:
http://smf95.myweb.uga.edu/bizfusion1/bizfusion/deskcrit.html

Journal Entry 6.2 - It's working :D!!!

I'm really happy that I have gotten my project to work for the dress rehearsal :) I had received precious feedback from Donna, Audra, Scott and Sunny (all their comments/suggestions will be added to this blog). I know there are a lot of things that needs to be improved in my project and I’ll work on them this week. I really have to thank my co-worker, Jin Tang, who helped me to get this project to work the way that I wanted :D.

Observing people interact with my project during dress rehearsal made me realized that some of the functions such as buttons are not very clear for the user. Another thing that people commented was to have a graphic or illustration that would help people’s understanding of the serving size of the food. Overall, people really liked the idea and the concept. Someone came to me and said that they were on a diet and this activity would help them to control their calorie intake.

Nowadays, more and more educational games are becoming a fusion of gaming aspects and real-life simulations, which can also be defined as “serious games” (de Freitas, 2006). And this is exactly what I’m planning to accomplish with my project. I know it would be hard to have a full simulation game going on, but I’ll try to get as close as possible to real-life interactions. That was my idea from the beginning. When I searched about developing games, I realized that military, business, and social and health settings have been developing and implementing simulation games in their instructional programs. According to Cohen (2006), the gaming simulations are intended to help people to learn how to work through the complexities of different context. Thus, I’ll keep trying to work on the “Prepare your meal” game in order to make it to look/feel more realistic.

Reference:

• Cohen, S. (2006). The curricular role for understanding social decisions. In S. Cohen, K. E. Portney, D. Rehberger & C. Thorsen (Eds.), Virtual decisions : digital simulations for teaching reasoning in the social sciences and humanities (pp.47-63). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

• de Freitas, S. I. (2006). Using games and simulations for supporting learning. Learning, Media and Technology, 31(4), 343-358.

Desk Crit IV

Date: Fri 11 Apr 13:10:52 EDT 2008
From: Daisyane Barreto Add To Address Book | This is Spam
Subject: Desk Crit
To: 81bada@uga.edu

Hi Eun Ju,

I really liked your project and how you used a clean and easy-to-use interface. The explanation that you provided in the first lesson about the site navigation was a great idea. It makes things simpler :)!!In general, you did an awesome job with you project and I know that you are still working hard to get everything done. I have only one suggestion for your project so far.

For lesson #5 “Place each lighting instrument”, you could have the following scene: a person sitting on a chair or maybe something similar like you have in lesson 1, displaying all the lights in the right position. Later, the learner would go to another scene, in which s/he would have only the person sitting on the chair in the right position. The learners would need to remember and match the light to its right position. This is just an idea that I had in mind :D!!

Well, I think that’s it for now. You did a fantastic job :)!! And good luck finalizing your project ;)!!

Best,
Daisy

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Desk Crit III

Date: Fri 11 Apr 12:34:28 EDT 2008
From: Daisyane Barreto Add To Address Book | This is Spam
Subject: Desk Crit
To: cjh9123@uga.edu

Hi Jea,

I think you project looks very good and your interface and graphic designs look awesome (I really liked the little doll at beginning :) – so cute! Overall, you did a great job with you project and I know that you are working hard to get it done. I have only a few suggestions for your project so far:

1) I noticed that you have tabs on the top of your program that you will take the user to another page or activity. I think you could add a brief explanation in the first page or on the help section, just to let the learner know what s/he will see or will be doing on those sections.

2) Another thing that I notice is that for your project, you want the learner to be able “to think a loud”. Thus, I think it would be good if you had some sort of tutorial or step-by-step to guide the learner through this process.
Well, I think that’s it for now. You did a great job :)!! And good luck finalizing your project ;)!!

Best,
Daisy

Project

This is the link to my project:

Prepare your meal

Desk Crit- Received

Desk Crit Received: 04/01
From: Donna Washington

Daisy,

I know you've been working hard to design your nutrition game. I think you have a great idea in the making, unfortunately due to our course time constraints, I know getting it where you want it to be has been difficult.

I believe your game idea is great because the basic premise can be applied to so many health issues. Beside planning meals for a person with diabetes you could also add a twist and have the player plan a meal that would meet the guidelines of a calorie reduced eating plan. The possiblities are endless.

I like the idea of a shopping cart model because it feels very life-like as well as something people are accustomed to if they have ever shopped online.

I do have a comment/suggestion I'd like to offer. I'm not sure of the formula you've suggested to determine if the meal meets your proposed requirements. You might think of adding some specific data regarding the problems of the meal. Something like a table showing the recommended fat, carb's,etc. and a readout showing the chosen meal's content. That way the learner can see in what nutritional areas they would need to reconsider.

I really hope you are able to work out the "bugs" and produce a great game.
Take care.

Donna

Entry 6.1 - working to make this game happen

Well, this week I have been following the “shopping cart” tutorial that Josh indicated me. However, the tutorial seems too advanced for my ActionScript (AS) skills – [Click here to check out the Shopping Cart tutorial]. The tutorial starts explaining how to create classes and AS files and as you go further you can create a shopping cart. After going through it, I wasn’t able to figure out by myself how I could implement this into my project. Therefore, I asked my co-worker (Jin Tang) for help - her skills in AS are way advanced that mine. I explained to her my project and my frustration trying to understand the AS code. After talking to her, she gave me some examples and explanations on how I could do this in an easier way. So, she gave this FLA file that she created as an example of what I need for my project. Her file does what I need to do for my project; however, I still need to work on it to make function correctly.

Thus, I’ll be working on it this weekend and I’ll post my results here this Sunday. So, please, bear with me until then :-S, okay?! I hope can get it to work by then.

By the way, I got a written Desk Crit by Donna Washington this week and I'll post here later in another post.

Entry 5 - Spelling out the game

Yesterday, I had a meeting with Josh about my project and I think the meeting went pretty well. Before we met, Josh had already requested me to spell out my ideas – “how does this game will work?” Therefore, I started writing down the process of the game and here is what I got:

Game: Prepare your meal

Theme: “Let’s eat Italian” (The reason to create a theme for the game is to limit our choices in terms of different meals a person can prepare)

How the game will work: The game will have 9 sections of food for the player to choose. They are: meat, bread, vegetables, fruit, dairy, condiments, beverages, sauce, and sweets/desserts. Most sections will have only three choices of food that the player can choose; others will have a little more (like the condiments section). The player can choose only one food per section. The value assigned for the food in each section should be as follow below:

• Light food – 1
• Average/regular – 2
• Heavy food – 3

Once the player clicked on the food that s/he wants to add to her/his dish, a new window will come up with the nutrition label of that food and the portion size. The player will select the portion size that s/he wants. The portion size and values assigned to them should be as follow below:

½ cup – 2

1 cup – 3

1 ½ cup – 4

After they have finished each section, they will click on a button, like “done” and then, the program will compute a formula like the following one:

A x B = C

If C> X they will receive negative feedback and the opportunity to “try again”.

If C they will receive positive feedback.

In my meeting with Josh, we discuss about the project and its feasibility. I showed him some of the sources that I have. We brainstormed a little bit more about the process of this game and we figure that what I would be developing is something similar with an online shopping cart. Thus, we looked on the Internet and we found a couple of sources. After looking through those resources, Josh said that I should try to have at least one section working by next week and that also, he mentioned that I should still keep working on “spelling out” my project to make it more clear and comprehensive if we need to ask information or help through online forums.

For next week, my plan is to work on the AS for my project. I’ll work with the “shopping cart” resources and try to have at least one section of my game working. I hope it works :-S!

Entry 4 - Problems w/ my project

I haven’t posted any new entry on my journal yet because I haven’t had a lot of progress (in terms of development) with my game and I feel really bad about it. However, I have been discussing with my client about it: how can we make it less complicated? We came with a small scope for it, but it’s still complicated for me to develop regarding the skills that I have so far. I have gotten some feedback for my project outside the Studio class and the recommendation that I have received was to read the following article :

Brown, S. J., Lieberman, D. A., Gemeny, B. A., Fan, Y. C., Wilson, D. M., & Pasta, D. J. (1997). Educational video game for juvenile diabetes: Results of a controlled trial. Medical Informatics, 22(1),77-89.

I couldn’t find the original source, so I just read the abstract of the article so far :(!

Also, I have been studying ActionScript in order to program my game and this was one thing that I discussed with a classmate about it. The problem with most gamming tutorials and open source that are available on the Internet do not provide the result that I am expecting for my game. Those websites offer explanations on how to build a race or fight game. It’s been hard to find good sources that offer what planning to develop for this game.

One of the books that I have been using to learn ActionScript is “Foundation ActionScript for Flash 8” by Kristian Besley, Sham Bhangal, Eric Dolecki, David Powers. It’s been very helpful for me to go through the book, especially because it provides the reader with a lot of analogy. Sometimes, the analogy seems silly; however, for someone like me that have always struggled with ActionScript, it makes easy to comprehend what you are doing.

Right now, I’m trying to understand how variables work with Movie Clips since this is the main thing that I need on my game project. I’m going through the examples and the explanations provided on the book as well as going on the Internet to look for tutorials and open sources. I think for my game what I’ll need to do is assign values to each food on the shelf (which will be a Movie Clip) and once the user clicks on it, the value will be stored. Then, for that, I think I might need to create some sort of array (which I’m not very familiar with). After the user has finished adding all the food to the bowl, the values should be computed. Basically, this is the part that I’m struggling right now. I’m not sure exactly how should I do this.

My plan for this week is to keep working on my project and trying to figure the ActionScript code.

Desk Crit II

Date: Thu 20 Mar 19:32:17 EDT 2008
From: Daisyane Barreto Add To Address Book | This is Spam
Subject: Desk Crit
To: surp0526@uga.edu

Hi Trudian,

Overall, I thought your prototype was excellent. It provided a lot of information about how your real product will look like. Also, it has a very clean interface and it seems very objective. I really liked what you have seen so far.

I have a few suggestion/comment to your project. On the activities screen, I’m not sure if you have already planned this or not, but it would be good to have a sort of checkmark on each activities that they have completed. I don’t know if it’s one of the goal of you project or not, but at least doing this, learners could keep track of the activities that they have already completed.

Another thing that I noticed on your project is that it has a lot of content and I know for some people it’s really hard to concentrate or keep up with the text information. One suggestion that I have is to make use of visual content whenever possible. I thought maybe you could display some of the text information through pictures, animations or diagrams. I know this sounds a lot, but it’s just a suggestion.

Your project looks great and I know it will be greater at the night of showcase :)!! You did a great job ;)!!

Best,
Daisy

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Service Hour- Entry 1

This semester, I committed to help the Brazilian Student Association (BSA) managing their website, since there is no webmaster responsible for it. I have been posting information and new events in their website, uploading pictures and images to the homepage, manipulating images, etc. My service hours so far has been up to 5 hours. I’ll try to commit with other kind of services, but I think it would be hard to manage it.

Organization: BSA - Brazilian Student Association
President of the organization: Jessica McAuliffe
Website: www.uga.edu/bsa

Desk Crit I

Date: Wed 19 Mar 20:23:51 EDT 2008
From: Daisyane Barreto Add To Address Book | This is Spam
Subject: Desk Crit
To: iyhou@uga.edu


Hi I-Yung,

I really like your project idea. I think developing a simulation game can help a lot of people, especially those that don’t know much about photography concepts. Since I wasn’t able to discuss with you about your project, I read you reflection journals and seems to me that you are in the right path with you project. I would love to discuss more with you about your project and how you are planning to develop. I’m also planning to develop a game, but I’m facing a lot of problems with the programming :P!!

I have some suggestions/ comments to you project:

1) You mentioned that you will develop simulations for each composition. Would it be better to have small activities (kind of drill and practice or so) for each composition and then have a simulation game that combines all the compositions? I think that way it would be more interesting and realistic for the player.
2) I don’t know how complicated to develop this might be (I think it might be too much), but what if you could have a scene in which the player need to take a snapshot. In order to do this, s/he would control a simulated camera. In this simulated camera, they could adjust the lens, focus, light, flash, etc in the camera. You wouldn’t need to have all these elements, but especially those that would influence the compositions.
3) I was looking through some websites and I found this report on a game about taking snapshot of birds. I don’t know if this would interest you or not, anyway, here is the link of the website:
http://www.letsgodigital.org/en/14122/bird-photography/
I hope this desk crit can be helpful.

See you tomorrow in class ;)

Daisy

Journal Entry 3

Unfortunately, I have been working in the development of my game yet. However, I have reading about games and simulations, trying to understand and implementing them for this project. Also, I have defined my project a little bit better as you can see below:

Justification:

Diabetes is a chronic disease characterized by high blood glucose in which the body does not produce or properly use insulin, depending on the type of diabetes (American Diabetes Association, 2008). It is common to notice that, in general, patients diagnosed with diabetes have difficulty to follow diets because they do not know how to read the nutrition label or they are not sure about the portion size that they are supposed to have while preparing their meal. Regarding this fact, it would be relevant to develop a gaming simulation to help not only diabetics but people in general to understand how to prepare a meal in those circumstances.

For this research, an educational game (prototype version) will be designed and developed to assist players to prepare a meal considering the following: nutrition label (carbohydrates, glucose and calories) and portion size. Once the game has been developed, alpha and beta test will be conducted to verify the impact of the game and possible attitudinal changes in the player’s life.

Purpose:

The purpose of this project is to design and build an educational digital game (prototype version) to teach diabetics and people in general how to prepare a healthy meal. Moreover, this game will be evaluated to verify its impact and possible attitudinal changes in a person’s life.

Questions:

1. How can an educational game affect learners’ behavior in real-life?

2. What kind of reactions do people have playing the game?

Educational game design and development

First, the game will provide players with a brief explanation of the activity and their tasks. Also, before playing the game, it will be suggest to players that they will go through a tutorial to learn more about topics such as: overview of diabetes, carbohydrates, nutrition label and portion size of foods. (In this case, I am not sure if I will be able to develop the game and the tutorial on time to showcase, therefore, I will be compromising in have a prototype version of the game for showcase).

Once on the game, players will see a shelf with different types of food as it is shown in the screen below:

Figure 1. A screenshot of the beginning of the game.

When players click on one of the desired food, a pop-window will open up. In this new window, they will have access to a summarized nutrition label (carbohydrates, glucose and calories). Players will also be able to choose the portion size of the chosen food ( ¼ cup, ½ cup, etc.). After they have added all the food for the meal, the game will offer feedback information regarding the amount of carbohydrates, glucose and calories on their meal.

Reference:

American Diabetes Association. 2008.

Journal Entry 2

This last Sunday, I had a meeting with my client and we discussed the content of the instructional product that we’ll be developing. She explained to me the important topics that we should discussed and also she provided me with basic information about the content.

Currently, I have been struggling with the content and how I can develop a game out of it. Another thing that concerns me is the fact that I am not a good programmer and this might be the skill that I will need most for this project.

On the topic of game, I have researched articles and also looked for sample of non-entertainment games. I have found a lot of articles discussing simulations and virtual-worlds, but few of them approach the development of non-entertainment games (serious games).

Besides the fact that those games have real-life content, it is important to notice that once playing a game, the player enters on a different atmosphere, which means that to be part of the game, the player must follow a set of complex rules. In addition, the context on these games are important for the learners, since they need to understand the process that is going on.

For example, a recent exploratory study has been conducted to investigate the implications and impact of individualized and reflective guidance in an educational Multi-User Virtual Environment (MUVE) (Nelson, 2007). In this study, a MUVE based on hypothesis formation and experimental design in science, called ‘River City’, was implemented with a sample of middle school students in order to verify the effects of its guidance system in the learning outcomes and also the differences in guidance use among male and female participants. River City (MUVE) provided a simulated environment for students who would explore the virtual city in order to find the cause for people’s illness.

One interesting fact of this research is that the 3D environment and simulation aspect captivated the learners. My intention developing this game is to have the students captivated by the context and the meaning of it. So far, it seems difficult to accomplish this task, but I’ll keep working and researching more about.

My plans for next week is to have my ideas and my game more outlined, as well as the content for this project. I feel that I’m a little behind on this, especially on the content. However, I hope that I can have more substantial information by next week.

Reference

Nelson, B. (2007). Exploring the use of individualized, reflective guidance in an educational multi-user virtual environment. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 16(1), 83-97.

Journal Entry 1

Until now, it had been really hard to conceptualize and visualize my project. From the moment that I enrolled for this until now, I had several ideas for my project, but none of them really got me. Some of my ideas were: to develop a 3D animation with Maya, create a stop-motion animation in Flash and design games for kids. I really want to develop an educational game not only for the challenge, but because I know, from a teacher and student’s perspective, how games help us to understand and explore the content to be studied in a very unique manner. Thus, I decided that I would develop a game for my 6190 project; however I still needed to know its content and subject. Also, I didn’t know very well how I would approach this game and which tool should I use.

One day, in an informal conversation with my roommate, we discussed about developing a game about diabetes. First, she explained me how important it would be to design and develop a game like this. She gave me an overall idea of the content and how I could approach. After that, I started to organize the information that she gave me and to imagine how I could create a game from that. I searched through the internet to see what kind of games have been developing in this area and it seems to me that are few and most of them are still in development phase. Even though, I knew what I was going to do (game) and the subject (diabetes), something was missing.

Therefore, I looked through books, visited some websites and talked with some co-workers and even got diabetes’ board game to understand how I could develop an online game from it. But today, discussing my idea with other peers I got confident about what I will do:

1) I will develop a non-entertainment digital game with its subject in diabetes. The game will focus on the educational aspect instead of the entertainment and fun part.

2) The game will be an instrument to inform and teach about diabetes to society in general.

3) The subject of the game will be type 2 of diabetes, which is prevalent among overweight/obese individuals, the elderly, and people with a genetic disposition for type 2 diabetes.

Although I have some goals and objectives to accomplish, there are still a lot of things that I need to work on. One of them is the feasibility of this product. I’m still not sure if I will be able to develop it. Thus, my goals for next week are:

· to have a flowchart of the game;

· to search tutorials and information on games;

· to discuss the content and its approach with my client;

I really hope that I can make this happen. We’ll see :)!!