Katy Howland, Judith Good and Ben du Boulay IDEAs Lab, Department of Informatics

1. 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.Howland}{J.Good}{B.du-Boulay}@sussex.ac.uk

2. Talk overview Background Teacher Consultation External Representations Theory Interface Design Considerations Future Work

3. Background: Motivation Concerns about children’s 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)

5. 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

6. 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)

7. 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?

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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!”

12. 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 isn’t explicitly represented, so the user has to hold this as a mental representation

13. 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.

14. 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.

15. 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.

16. 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.

17. 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 shouldn’t 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)

18. 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.

19. 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

20. 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

21. 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’.

22. 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

24. 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

25. Questions