Collaborative learning through a math game: Does it motivate children for better learning?

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Collaborative learning through a multi-touch math game:

Does it motivate children for better learning?

Martin Myhrstuen

01.November 2013

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This thesis has been written as a partial requirement for the masters degree in In- formatics at the University of Oslo. Study direction: Design, Use and Interaction.

First, I would like to thank my thesis supervisor Alma Leora Cul´en for her feedback and advices throughout the making of this thesis. The help I have received have been very valuable and it has never been a problem getting feedback outside office hours as well.

I also want to thank the participants attending my deign-workshops and all the good and interesting feedback I got from you. The game would never been completed without your help! Also a big thanks to the teacher for taking the time to participate in an interview, this really helped my thesis get some more academic weight.

Last but not least I would like to thank Jeanette Cooper for many months of patience and all the support and love she has shown me through it all. It has kept me standing tall all the way.

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In this thesis, game based learning amongst primary-school children is explored with a multi-touch table as the platform. In part, the thesis reflects upon design and development of a game that could be tested on the multi-touch table. The focus was on designing a collaborative game for learning through fun. The thesis describes an iterative user-centered design-process involving multiple stakeholders relevant to the topic. The design-process is described from the first stage of concept development through to the working high-fidelity prototype of the game that was also tested with users. In addition to game evaluation, the thesis takes a look into what makes games fun to play, what is important to consider when developing for children and fun. Multi-touch technology as an educational and collaborative tool is reviewed from the literature, in order to identify key advantages and good design choices for implementation of applications for learning. . . .

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Acknowledgements 1

List of Figures 6

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Objective . . . 2

1.1.1 Goals. . . 2

1.2 Motivation . . . 2

1.2.1 Personal motivation. . . 2

1.2.2 Academic motivation . . . 3

1.3 Problem area . . . 3

1.3.1 Aim . . . 3

1.3.2 Research questions . . . 3

1.4 Project Breakdown . . . 4

1.5 Outline. . . 4

2 Previous Research 5 2.1 Litterature search . . . 5

2.1.1 Physical attributes of multi-touch tables support collaboration 5 2.1.2 Guidelines for designing multi-touch applications for collaboration . . . 10

2.1.3 Gamification . . . 15

2.2 Summary . . . 20

3 Methods 22 3.1 Research approach and methodology . . . 22

3.1.1 Qualitative research methods . . . 22

3.1.2 Research paradigm . . . 22

3.2 Methodology . . . 23

3.2.1 Grounded theory . . . 23

3.3 Design Approach . . . 23

3.3.1 User centered design . . . 23

3.3.2 Why user centered design? . . . 24

3.4 Research methods . . . 24

3.4.1 Data Collection Methods . . . 24 3

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3.4.2 Design Methods . . . 25

3.4.3 Card sorting . . . 27

3.5 Ethical Considerations . . . 27

4 Design process 28 4.1 Concept . . . 28

4.1.1 Introduction . . . 28

4.1.2 Intentions and strategy . . . 28

4.1.3 Target group . . . 30

4.2 Concept formulation . . . 30

4.3 Data gathering . . . 31

4.3.1 Interview . . . 31

4.3.2 Brainstorming . . . 32

4.3.3 Mind map . . . 33

4.4 Proof of concept. . . 35

4.4.1 Workshop 1 . . . 35

4.4.2 Summary . . . 39

4.5 Lessons learned . . . 39

4.6 Final Concept . . . 40

4.6.1 Game description . . . 41

4.7 High-fidelity prototype . . . 41

4.7.1 Evaluation . . . 42

4.8 Design process Iteration 2 . . . 43

4.8.1 Intentions . . . 43

4.8.2 Workshop . . . 43

4.9 Lessons learned . . . 47

4.9.1 High-fidelity prototype . . . 47

4.9.2 Evaluation . . . 48

5 Development process 49 5.1 Intentions . . . 49

5.2 Tools . . . 49

5.2.1 Programming language . . . 49

5.2.2 Eclipse IDE . . . 50

5.2.3 Multi-touch 4 java framework . . . 50

5.3 What is a prototype . . . 50

5.4 Developing Version 1 . . . 51

5.5 Developing Version 2 . . . 53

5.6 Summary . . . 56

6 Results 58 6.1 Results and discussion . . . 58

6.1.1 Discussion related to research question one . . . 61

6.1.2 Discussion related to research question two . . . 64

6.2 Further testing on a multi-touch table. . . 65

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6.3 Conclusion . . . 65

A Consent Form 67

B Interview-questions 69

C Interview transcription 71

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2.1 Microsoft Surface multi-touch table . . . 5

2.2 Children playing with multi-touch tabletop . . . 7

2.3 Meta-Motivators wordcloud . . . 17

2.4 Gamification and Motivation. . . 18

4.1 User centered design approach . . . 30

4.2 Mind map of ideas from brainstorming session . . . 33

4.3 Monopoly paper based prop used in explorative workshop. . . 36

4.4 Card sorting task used in explorative workshop . . . 37

4.5 High fidelity prototype version 1.0 . . . 42

4.7 Child playing MathBubbles . . . 44

5.1 Background image . . . 51

5.2 Bubble . . . 52

5.3 Point indicator & Wrong answer indicator . . . 52

5.4 High-fidleity prototype - version 1.0 . . . 53

5.5 Score counter . . . 54

5.6 Bubble with random number. . . 54

5.7 Math piece indicator . . . 55

5.8 Highlighting the math piece . . . 55

5.9 High score list . . . 56

5.10 High-fidleity prototype - version 1.1 . . . 57

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Introduction

Have you ever used your mobile device to play games or entertain yourself playing with others in a social context? Have you played a game for the purpose of learning something? With rapid development of ubiquitous technologies we find ourselves more and more dependent on mobile, private technologies of different kinds. Most times we use this technology to do meaningful things such as to do our job, e.g.

get in touch with co-workers or schedule our weekly appointments. Many also use this technology for entertainment to play games or stay in touch with friends.

It has become a part of our everyday life and we cant live without it. I am talking about devices such as smart-phones or tablets used in a growing number of social contexts. These devices take advantage of multi-touch technology, a technology that has gained a lot of interest in use for educational purposes such as teaching children different subjects in school. Because of the growth of interactive whiteboards around the world, as well as the emergence of multi-touch tables, tangible computing devices and mobile devices, there is a need to explore how the next generation of HCI will impact education in the future [1]. Educators are often introducing the technology that has not been designed for learning, such as the iPad, as learning tools. This is because the iPad as a mobile learning device has a potential to change learning towards more constructivist learning practices with larger autonomy for a student to decide on where, when and how to do their work. With the appearance of the iPad, learning through games also became more accessible as a learning paradigm. Multi-touch tables potentially provide the same opportunity, however by the nature of the space they may land themselves better towards collaborative games.

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1.1 Objective

The objective of this master thesis was to explore the possibilities that collaborative educational games and multi-touch technology offer. This exploration is carried out by designing and implementing a learning game and then exploring the difference in experience between using the game on other platforms vs. using it on the multi-touch table. The design process was carried out with user involvement.

1.1.1 Goals

The goal for this master thesis was to provide an insight on how multi-touch technology and game-based learning could be used as a learning environment for children from primary-school (age 8 to 12). By using a multi-touch table as the base for the conducted research the thesis tries to argue for how a collaborative and educational multi-touch game can serve as a potentially usable learning tool opposed to the traditional and most common ones such as reading books. In addition to this, a user centered design approach was used to involve the users in the making of a collaborative and educational multi-touch game. Both pre-school and primary school institutions are within the scope of this research.

1.2 Motivation

1.2.1 Personal motivation

One of the main personal motivations for choosing to work with this particular topic was the eager to make children play games for the purpose of learning rather than pure entertainment. Personal experience has led me to believe that there are too few games where the focus is to educate the users and I wanted to do this thesis to find out how an educational game could be made fun and entertaining even though the main focus is to learn something. Another motivation was the curiosity for multi-touch technology as well as my desire to develop something for a multi-touch table.. The motivation to develop a game in collaboration with the users was one of the forces that made me start the work on this thesis. In addition to this a multi-touch game called The Sustainable Future has inspired me further.

In this game developed by Antle et al. [2], the goal is to work with other players to support a growing population as time passes while minimizing the negative impact

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on the environment. The game was made in a research project with the goal to identify key design-factors needed in order to create opportunities for learning. I love the way this game combine fun and entertainment factors as well as preservers it’s main purpose which is to teach the players.

1.2.2 Academic motivation

“Applications running on multi-touch tabletops are beginning to be developed to enable children to collaborate on a variety of activities, from photo sharing to playing games. However, little is known as to how children work together on such interactive surfaces” [3]. In addition to this little is known about which learning activities this technology will support, not to mention the learning effect it has compared to traditional learning tools [4]. Providing some empirical data that would increase the knowledge in this area is one of the strongest academic motivations behind this thesis.

1.3 Problem area

1.3.1 Aim

The aim of this master thesis was to explore the possibilities multi-touch technology gives to collaborative game based learning. In addition to this we explore the physical attributes of multi-touch tabletops in regards to how they can be an enabler for collaboration; this is done through a literature search. The aim was also to develop a concept, implement a game and test it on the appropriate target group.

1.3.2 Research questions

How to design a math game for learning with children for a multi-touch tabletop?

Does gamification motivate children to learn math and how?

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1.4 Project Breakdown

Literature survey, in order to gather information on previous research in the field.

Develop a concept for the game with help of children in the target age group.

Develop prototypes of the game through an iterative design process, and evaluate the results.

Conduct interviews, brainstorming, mind-maps and workshops with the appropriate target group and different stakeholders throughout the design- pro- cess.

Analyze and discuss the results.

1.5 Outline

The outline of this thesis is as follows; it starts off with a literature survey on previous research done on collaborative game-based learning on a multi-touch table. This chapter argues for the possibilities a multi-touch table gives us in terms of collaboration and game-based learning. It also covers hardware and software benefits that make a multi-touch table an enabler for collaborative learning. In addition to this gamification is described in detail; how can gamification be used as a motivator for learning? Chapter 3 covers the research approach and methodology used throughout this thesis. It also describes the research methods used for data-collection, design and data-analysis. In addition to this it has a section on ethical considerations, which are important to have in mind when including many different stakeholders in the research. Chapter 4 covers the design process.

This chapter encapsulates the design process all the way from the concept development phase and into a working high-fidelity prototype, all in collaboration with the appropriate target group. In chapter 5 the development process is described in detail. It takes on a more technical aspect of the thesis, describing the programming language and frameworks used to make the high-fidelity prototype. In chapter 6 the conclusion and results of this thesis are described in detail. The research questions are answered for and discussed on. Last but not least comes chapter 7, which covers the possible future work. It describes what remains to be done in terms of research and game development.

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Previous Research

In this chapter i will review previous litterature and research on the fields of multi- touch technology, learning, designing and gamification.

2.1 Litterature search

2.1.1 Physical attributes of multi-touch tables support col- laboration

Figure 2.1: Microsoft Surface Multi-touch table. Source: [5]

When I talk about multi-touch technology, its important to state that I am actually talking about multi-touch tables and similar objects in size and form where multiple users can interact with the device simultaneously (See figure 2.1). Many different commercial and customized multi-touch tables fitting this description have become available over the past few years. Devices such as the “Diamond Touch” by Di- etz & Leigh [6], “Microsoft Surface” [5]

and the “Reactable” by Jorda are some examples of this. Even though a vari-

ety of touch table interfaces have been made, the question is how they support 5

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learning through collaboration is still of interest. One way in which they might provide a collaborative space is related to their physical attributes and that would be the place to start.

Many may think that multi-touch technology such as a multi-touch table would easily enable people to interact and collaborate better on certain tasks; in many cases this statement is considered to be true. The claim is that these interfaces provide more opportunities for flexible forms of collaboration compared to single user PCs and mouse input, through allowing co-located users to interact smoothly and simultaneously with digital content [7]. In addition to this it is claimed that the lightweight and parallel action of touching, the mobility of users, and the increased ability for natural expressions of behavior such as gesture and posture extend the possibilities for communication and collaboration. User studies have shown how groups of people new to multi-touch tables find enjoyment in sharing and assembling sets of digital images for variety of collaborative tasks [8], [9].

If we look closer at the picture displayed in figure 2.1 we might agree that the table itself looks appealing. It is also shown that young students are drawn to its surface, where work and play come together in hands-on, collaborative activities.

[10] If we were to compare a multi-touch table to single touch devices, or single- user environments such as tablets, phones or PCs, just enabling more users to participate simultaneously would most likely improve collaboration. Harris et al.

[11] did a study on how children would collaborate solving a task on a single-touch device versus a multi-touch device. In groups of three, they collaborated on a planning task in which they designed a seating plan for their classroom. Harris et al. [11] found out that the technology itself did not have any impact on the frequency or equity of interactions, but that it did influence the nature in which the children collaborated on the task. On the single-touch device the children talked more about turn-taking whereas on the multi-touch device they talked more about the task at hand. These results indicate that multi-touch tabletops enhance the quality of collaboration between the participants, as it makes the boundaries between humans and technology less visible. The participants focus more on the task at hand rather than limitations of the technology they are using.

With reference to the research done by Harris et al. [11] we know that multi-touch technology in terms of relatively large touch-sensitive devices enables people to interact and collaborate more easily, but its also important to acknowledge that different hardware design-choices have an impact on how the participants interact and whether it improves or impair collaboration. In Cul´en et al. [12], [12] argue somewhat differently that what I would expect. Collecting images and writing

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stories has been tested with eight children of age 10, and it was found that the children preferred PC with a keyboard and mouse. Some of the reasons for that, the authors argue, may be that the children were familiar with PCs and knew how to find pictures easily. Another factor may be that they thought that multi-touch technology was not mature enough and found it to be too slow to write on, see figure 2.2.

Figure 2.2: The children telling stories on the multitouch and on the laptop.

Photo: Cul´en. [12]

Scott et al. [9] wrote a paper in 2003 focusing on developing a set of guidelines for co-located collaborative work on table top displays. Even though this article is somewhat outdated, I feel that many of these guidelines still apply to the multi- touch technology we use today. Here are the guidelines I still think apply when arguing for the support of collaboration around a multi-touch table.

1. Support interpersonal interaction

The system has to support interpersonal interaction and communication between the users. It is crucial that the technology used do not set any technical boundaries in terms of the communication process needed to complete a specific task. The system cant be designed in a way that requires the users to have any previous technical experience.

Is this something a multi-touch table can provide? If we look back at the observations done by Harris et al. [11] regarding a single-touch device versus a multi-touch device, the multi-touch device clearly provided a technology that the users became a part of. The observations done did not indicate any technical boundaries impairing collaboration between the users; instead it provided a context that enhanced collaboration around the table making the technology invisible and a part of the users as a whole. The users could freely interact and cooperate amongst each other without having to think

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about inevitable technological constraints that may or may not interfer with their task at hand.

2. Consideration of the appropriate arrangements for users

The application has to set a final maximum number of users participating at the same time. It is important that the users have their own and fixed locations around the table, so that no unnecessary interruptions will take place.

”There are many factors that can influence the peoples preferred locations, which in turn can influence the interpersonal interaction within the group“

[9]. ”Physical properties of the table such as size or shape can influence seating positions“ [9]. As we can see, the possibility to have fixed locations around the table as well as a table that have the appropriate physical properties is important to improve collaboration between users. A multi-touch table both have the form, size and height to support a variety of different users making it easy to collaborate. A maximum number of participants should be decided on the basis of these attributes, this is important to prevent too many participants at the same time, spoiling the ability to cooperate and collaborate on the task at hand.

3. Support simultaneous user actions

It is important that the system as a whole supports simultaneous user actions. ”Teamwork is often comprised of a variety of collaboration styles, including working in parallel, working sequentially on tightly coupled activities, working independently and working under assumes roles, such as director and actor“ [9]. ”On systems that dont support this kind of con- currency, the users have difficulties working independently. This is because they constantly have to monitor the other collaborators in order to know when the system is ready for them to use“ [9]. When we talk about the system as a whole, we mean both software and hardware. There is no use for software that supports simultaneous user actions, if the hardware doesnt.

Multi-touch technology is designed for this exact purpose. It can identify multiple users using multiple touch-points simultaneously. This proves that a multi-touch table is well suited to function as a device that supports many different types of collaboration styles. Again, this is another indication that a multi-touch table support collaboration between the participants, because it enables the participants to collaborate in so many different ways.

In addition to the guidelines described by Scott et al. [9] we have to look at other aspects of what encapsulates a multi-touch table. Multi-touch tables can come

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in many different shapes and sizes, but some supports collaboration better than others. A paper by B [13] takes on and explains a variety of different attributes regarding multi-touch devices that are important to think about in terms of collaboration. As a first he emphasizes that size matters. ”Size largely determines what muscle groups are used, how many fingers/hands can be active on the surface, and what types of gestures are suited for the device.“ [13] What this means is that the larger a multi-touch device is, the more it supports collaboration. It enables more people to interact with it at the same time and with gestures other than one point touching. It enables people to take advantage of the space available, and use gestures that make use of a bigger part of the surfaces total space. A multi-touch table can come in many different sizes, but the overall size is large enough to prove Bill Buxtons point that size really matters. Another important aspect is vertical vs. horizontal displays. Own observations indicate that vertically mounted displays contributes towards a more freely interaction between participants. This means that people move more between and around each other to reach other parts of the display, resulting in more confusion and a higher number of conflicts. This again results in a decreased ability to collaborate. On the other hand utilizing a horizontal display with some kind of fixed locations proves to be a lot better.

People have their own personal positions around the table and have no use of moving around it. This makes the collaboration function more smoothly and are only interrupted by a scenario where two or more participants reaches for the same screen-object.

Summary

Even though there is a lack of articles taking on the questions about which hardware design-choices or physical attributes that support collaboration, this literature survey has tried to present the most important guidelines found. Based on previous research as well as own experience and observations we can now try to draw a conclusion. Does the majority of multi-touch tables posses the right physical attributes in order to support collaboration? A multi-touch table should posses a height that makes it fit most people standing up. It should also have a relatively large size, so that two or more people can fit around it simultaneously.

For most people a normal sized multi-touch table would support this, but this is not the case when talking about children. The table would have to be adjusted in order to fit the average height of the people participating. This means that an average multi-touch table would have to be adjusted down in terms of height to make it support collaboration between children as it does for adults. A multi-touch

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table should also be easy to use; the participants should not need any previous knowledge to the technology or the table. It should also support multiple people interacting with it simultaneously, but there is also important that a predefined maximum number of participants are allowed. This is also controlled by the physical size and form of the table. The table should be displayed horizontally and not be tilted in any way. If the participants have fixed locations in addition to this, there will be a minimum number of conflicts between them.

2.1.2 Guidelines for designing multi-touch applications for collaboration

As argued for in section 2.1, multi-touch technology and a multi-touch table in particular may have the right combination of physical attributes to support collaboration between users exceptionally well. Now, I will expand the scope and bring multi-touch game-based applications into an educational setting. I will look further into how multi-touch applications used in an educational setting can probide support for collaobrative learning.

As of now, the introduction of new technologies into an educational setting has rarely lived up to the expectations in terms of benefits for learning [14]. Over- generalization and over-expectation within CSCL (Computer supported collaborative learning) research as described by Dillenbourg and Evans [15] is two of the reasons why. ”Over-generalization results from attributing the learning effects demonstrated in a specific instance of a technology to the entire technology, while over-expectation results from the enthusiasm triggered by any novel technology“

[15]. Through Cubans research [16] we see that, historically, many waves of new technology have passed through schools and classrooms, none leaving a lasting effect. Computers have been found to be unused or underused in most schools [17].

Factors contributing to this situation are many and well researched. About the tablet, Cuban [16] says: There is very little evidence that kids learn more, faster or better using these machines. iPads are marvelous tools to engage kids, but the novelty effect wears off and you get into hard-core issues of teaching and learning.

Cul´en and Gasparini [18] claim that the children like cool technology. Multi-touch tables are considered to be cool new technology. Even though there has been little conclusive evidence of impact on measured learning outcomes, there are still technological characteristics, coupled with the coolness factor and pedagogical possibilities that make multi-touch the right tool in the attempt to increase the likelihood of improved learning outcomes, and in this case collaborative learning.

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Dillenbourg and Evans [15] emphasizes that tabletop displays (multi-touch tables) have a specific educational flavor. By this they mean that these tabletop environments are designed especially for co-located teamwork and collaboration, opposed to most CSCL environments which are designed for on-line activity. On-line func- tionality may be integrated in tabletop displays as well, but it generally enriches the face to face activity rather than the central activity. Also, studies by Johnson and D.W. [19] on cooperative learning suggest that a large majority of students learn more effectively when they work cooperatively. ”Multi-user environments are said to provide a natural interaction in supporting collaboration, compared to individual and none collocated technologies“ [7]. Yuill and Rogers [7] identifies three mechanisms accounting for the success of such interfaces, and they emphasize that these mechanisms is crucial when talking about behavior that underlie interactions of users doing collaborative tasks. The three mechanisms are; ”Awareness of others“, ”Control of action“, ”Availability of information“.

”Awareness of others means the extent to which people, when they interact with new user interfaces that involve seeing, touching, and gesturing, have ongoing awareness of the actions, intentions, emotions, and other mental states of other interactants“ [7]. Recent research indicates that multi-user touch surfaces enhance awareness compared to other input devices. Ha et al. [20] demonstrated that participants have better awareness of others actions with touch rather than with a mouse as the input device. Hornecker et al. [21] showed that awareness of others activity was increased in the touch condition, when comparing mouse and touch input for collaboration on a planning task.

”Control of action refers to the ways in which users can effect changes in actions within the system and hence decisions within the group“ [7]. Rogers et al. [22]

showed us the multiple ways in which the participants could have control, using the idea of multiple entry points that gave all participants opportunities for control by different means.

”Availability of information is what information is on hand in the background to influence users awareness and control“ [7]. The difference between availability of information and awareness is that availability concerns information relevant to the task that is accessible for all explicitly and over time, whereas awareness involves the ongoing, moment-to-moment, generally implicit cues we use in all interactions.

[7] Availability of background information is particularly relevant for multi-user interfaces because of the opportunities these technologies give for harvesting and displaying information about the state of play over time and the history of the

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interactions [7]. Rick et al. [23] designed Digitile, a tile-pattern application for the Diamond Touch (a multi-touch tabletop), to provide a running history of previous states. This enabled users to return easily to a previous state of the design.

Regardless of which of these three mechanisms we consider, the degree of constraint or freedom provided for each of them is an important aspect to consider when designing for smooth collaboration. Constraints, like awareness and control is not good or bad in itself, but sometimes removing constraints, such as turn-taking can cause discomfort for the users. [7]. Some multi-touch applications may benefit from these constraints, while other may not. The designer needs to understand how constraints affect natural human-human interactions, and how these can be used to support smooth collaboration in a given context.

Some researchers have already done work indicating that multi-touch tabletops have an increased effectiveness on learning outcomes compared to traditional learning tools or ways of learning. Higgins et al. [14] did a study trying to find notable differences in learning outcomes regarding the solving of a mystery task on multi- touch versus paper based interaction. He found that the groups using the multi- touch device developed a joint understanding of the problem a lot faster than the group working with the paper based condition. He also discovered that the multi-touch group engaged more in interactive discussion than the others. Similar, Piper and Hollan [24] did a study on two groups of students studying for the same exam, one using a multi-touch device and the other using paper. They found that the students using the multi-touch device were more likely to attempt problems, and also try to solve these problems more times before looking at the answers in the back of the book. This suggests that including a tabletop application in study sessions may be proven useful! Another type of software that has been developed for the purpose of collaborative learning is the Reflect table by Bachour et al. [25].

This table is supposed to support collaboration by providing feedback and monitoring the collaborative process. With color-coded circles it displays how much each participant has talked during the session or how much a particular topic has been discussed. ”This tool, which is based upon the premise that equitable participation is important aims to increase participation by increasing awareness of this feature of collaboration. [14]. The results indicate that participants that usually dont talk that much talk more and participants that usually talk a lot decrease their overall participation to a more average level. This suggests that reflective tools on a multi-touch tabletop can support a collaborative learning process, resulting in more participation in a collaborative session.

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In addition to the collaborative tasks mentioned above, digital collaborative games are introduced as a possible path to follow when striving for improved learning outcomes and a successful collaborative environment, especially amongst children.

“Digital tabletops offer unique opportunities to facilitate collaborative learning interactions in formal spaces” [2]. “Educational games, if done well, promise to couple the intrinsic appeal of strategic play with a learning process. The potential to use affordances of tabletop displays and multi-touch surfaces to support games for learning is compelling” [2]. Antle et al. [2] introduces a game called Futura. In this game they investigate which design factors that are important to enable the kinds of interactions that support collaborative learning on a multi-touch tabletop. The plot of the game is that participants collaborate to support a growing population as time passes, while minimizing negative impact on the environment.

In the development face of this game, they emphasize the importance of designing the game in a way that support learning amongst the participants. There exists many different types of theoretical perspectives on this field, some examples are;

“Experimental learning (learning by doing)”, “Constructivist learning” and “Col- laborative learning”. If we approach the design from a collaborative learning perspective, CSCL theories emphasizes three important elements required to support this; Objects of negotiation, referential anchors and support for meta-cognition.

“Objects of negotiation are shared external representations which can be modified by individuals or a group during the learning process” [26]. “Referential anchors are context-specific objects, utterances or gestures that support learners coming to common ground or understanding” [27]. “Meta-cognitive processes that require support during group learning include monitoring, evaluating and regulating individual and group understanding as they develop” [28]. So, which design features are important to include when striving to support these theoretical guidelines, hence improve learning amongst the participants? “Referential anchors may be explicitly included through the use of digital representations” [2]. An example can be a status screen in any collaborative digital game, where the participants get information about their own progress as well as team progress. “It grounds the players communication in shared understandings of what has been achieved in the game, and what remains to be completed” [2]. Another example from the Futura game and also one that support objects of negotiation is the three sided interface design, where each participant has their own toolbar. “This three sided interface ensures that each player can see what the other are doing, and can help others by reaching over to anothers toolbar. This provides opportunities for each player to learn from and help others, and in doing so, help the group succeed” [2].

To support metacognitive processes the game is short (only 3 minutes) and goal

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directed. This provides motivation to thinking, feeling, behavior and attention which facilitate learning from play. The results from the research done with this game indicates that there are many key design features to take into consideration when developing a collaborative digital game with the intention to support and facilitate learning amongst the participants. The conclusion offered by Antle et al. [2] is that creating a real-time simulation game world, using multi-touch interactions and the spatial structure of the tabletop to support players to take roles but not allow a single player to game over the game is a key design guideline to support collaborative learning. She also emphasizes that is important to use discrete world events to momentarily pause the multi-touch interaction, enabling the participants to facilitate reflection and self-regulation. It is also important to use spatially separate but also shareable individual territories and resources to facilitate negotiation and learning from others. Antle et al. [2] suggests that the Futura design features can be used as an example on how to enable collaborative learning through game play on a digital tabletop.

Another research-paper focusing on digital collaborative games on multi-touch tabletops is Lets Clean Up This Mess: Exploring Multi-Touch Collaborative Play by Khaled et al. [29]. They made a game where the participants had to make different sandwiches according to recipes appearing on the screen. To finish in time collaboration had to take place between the participants. Rilla Khaled concludes that Multi-touch surfaces have much potential for collaborative play; the only issue they discovered was the use of gestures and how the players were not consistently able to determine which objects on the screen that was interactable. This is probably another key-design feature to have in mind when developing a digital collaborative game for multi-touch tabletops, there has to be a notable difference in the way interactable objects appear on the screen as opposed to the objects with fixed location and size.

A similar game, called KORC (Keep our rivers clean) by Goh et al. [30] is also a collaborative game with the goal to identify key design features which both enhances collaborative learning and creates a successful collaborative learning environment. The results they present is very similar to the ones found by Alissa N.

Antle, a set of guidelines important to have in mind when developing for the goals just mentioned.

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Summary

Based on this review, multi-touch applications on multi-touch table tops in a collocated group environment seem to support collaborative learning. The research reviewed indicates that collaboration amongst users, in general improves learning outcomes. With multi-touch tables being a natural tool for collaboration in so many ways, it is likely that we will see in the future even more multi-touch applications, as well as research articles on collaboration. We are thus also likely to see some further improvements in learning strategies and outcomes. It enables users to participate and collaborate in a way that few or no other technologies can compete with. The threshold is low in terms of usage and acceptance and applications can support a variety of different educational skills and subjects. Even though multi-touch applications itself supports collaboration, is it important to state that different design features can enhance or impair this, especially when making educational games for young teenagers or children. Many studies have been done to identify different software design features that, if used right can enhance collaboration further. These design features can also impair collaboration if used incorrectly or if used without proper constraints in the given context. It is also important that designers are fully aware of which target-group they are developing and designing an application for; different design choices and constraints will have a direct impact on how well it will support collaboration and if there will be any notable differences in learning outcomes compared to traditional learning tools.

Thus, based on the literature, we say that multi-touch applications in an educational setting may provide good support for collaborative learning.

2.1.3 Gamification

Gamification is the use of game thinking and game mechanics in a non-game context in order to engage users and solve problems. Gamification is used in applications and processes to enhance user engagement and learning (referanse wiki?).

Even though the term gamification has its origin back in 2002, the widespread usage of the term did not begin until 2010. The concept of bringing social/reward aspects of games into other types of software emerged amongst venture capital- ists; they wanted to make their software fun to use. Deterding et al. [31] says

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that the recent introduction of gamified applications to large audiences promises new additions to the existing rich and diverse research on the heuristics, design patterns and dynamics of games and the positive user experience they provide.

Gamification can be classified in three different categories.

External Gamification is when gamification is applied to an application for the reason of getting potential customers. This form of gamification is often found in marketing and sales.

Internal Gamificationis when gamification is used to enhance productiv- ity and promote collaboration within an organization. An example of this can be crowd sourcing.

Behavior Change is when the purpose of using gamification is to change someones behavior pattern. An example is a website promoting personal savings.

Gamification as a design approach has rapidly gained traction in interaction design and digital marketing [32]. The idea of bringing video-game elements such as rewards, points and badges into other types of software has really exploded throughout all kinds of different industries. You can now find applications and software-solutions taking advantage of gamification in anything from health and finance to news and tutorials. One good example of this is the foursquare website.

(referanse) Foursquare is a location based social-networking website for mobile devices. The purpose of the application is for the users to check in at different venues with the help of foursquare. GPS is used to find nearby places for the users to use as check-in points, and every time a user checks in he/she is rewarded with user points or sometimes badges. Foursquare has approximately 20 Million users worldwide, and has become extremely popular using gamification as their business model. Another example of well used gamification is the Bunchball Nitro, a platform which aims to motivate online user engagement. It contains a set of game mechanics, including badges, team points and leader boards for websites, social communities, mobile applications etc (referanse) Bunchball Nitro currently gen- erates 70 Million unique users and 2,3 Billion actions each month. While regular users strive to achieve badges and points in their own gamification software, the developers behind each application strives to achieve good results with Bunchball Nitro. This creates a life cycle where users always will be generating marketing- values, and where developers always will strive to keep their application up to date. You can say this scenario is a win-win situation.

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Figure 2.3: Meta-Motivators wordcloud. Source: [33]

Gamification And Motivation

It is clear that gamification stimulates the need to achieve, but can this be used as an educational tool for the purpose of improving learning outcomes amongst students in the school system? Hopefully yes! Game based learning is not something that is new to this world, and there has been done research with significant dis- coveries over the past years. Researchers have found that education/or computer- based learning have real potential as learning tools [34] [35] [36] [37]. Game design elements are often very efficent in increasing motivation as they are grounded on research results of positive psychology. It has also been shown that games can help players to improve their problem-solving skills, narrative and communication skills, as well as non-linear thinking patterns [38]. Games offer meaningful social experiences that can translate into the real world. Playing games makes us happy because they fulfill important human desires to work with others [39].

When people play games, they are tapping into their best qualities, their ability to me motivated, to be optimistic and to collaborate with others [40].

What if we could combine the positive attributes of game-based learning with gamification? Recently there has been an increased interest in gamification of education as a means to increase students motivation for learning [38]. Motivation amongst the users is the key-motivator for developers to apply gamification to their games. Especially when it comes down to education, motivation is whats needed for so many students around the world. As you can see from Figure 2.3,

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Figure 2.4: Gamification and Motivation. Source: [33]

motivation is a very complex matter. Figure 2.3 is a word-cloud with different parts of our motivational spectrum, so called meta-motivators by Maslow [33].

Different aspects of gamification affect different parts these meta-motivators as presented in figure 2.4. Here you can see how achievements and reputation affect our esteem, while points and progression stimulate the need to feel mastery. The idea of bringing gamification into educational games and game-based learning are likely to create improved results. By using it right it is likely that the students will be more motivated which in turn will generate improved learning outcomes.

In addition to gamification and game-based learning, I want to introduce a new term; Serious games. A serious game is a game designed for a primary purpose other than pure entertainment. These games are often simulations of real-world events and processes designed for the purpose of solving a problem (see section 2.1.3). Educational games are always defined as serious game, as there always is a clear goal of improving a particular skill amongst the users. In addition to serving this important purpose, recent researchers and developers emphasize that a serious game also have a lot of fun to it. Malone [41] wrote a paper about his intuitions of what make games fun to play. In this paper he emphasizes different characteristics that make computer games successful. He suggests three different categories for games; Challenge, Fantasy and Curiosity.

Challenge games must provide a goal whose attainment is uncertain. The very notion of a game is that it has some sort of object that the user strives to ac- complish. This goal is what makes it interesting for the users to keep playing,

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but as with everything else not all goals are equally good. Simple games should provide obvious goals; the more obvious and compelling the goal is the better.

In my case, the game itself is fairly simple and referring to Malone [41], the goal of the game should be simple as well. See chapter 5.X for further discussion on this topic. Other important characteristics of a challenge game are performance feedback and the option of different difficulty levels. Performance feedback is the idea that the users need to know if they are getting closer to the main goal or not.

Different users have different skill-levels and the game should have the option to address this issue, if a user is certain of succeeding in the game, they find it boring.

Good games often have multiple level goals for the users to achieve as well, see chapter 5.X for further discussion.

Fantasy gamesare games that include fantasy show or evoke images of physical objects or social situations not actually present [41]. An example of such a game is Hangman. The game is made fun by taking an existing curriculum and overlay it with a game in which the player progresses towards a fantasy goal. The fantasy goal in this case is to prevent the poor line man from getting hanged.

Curiosity is the motivation to learn independent of any goal-seeking or fantasy fulfillment [41]. It is possible to achieve this in a game if the game provides environments that have an optimal level of informational complexity. This means that the environment should not be to simple but neither to difficult with respect to the users already existing knowledge. An optimal curiosity environment is where the user has expectations about what he thinks will happen, but where these expectations are not always met

Serious Games

Serious Games are simulations of real world events or processes designed for the purpose of solving a problem, and differs from other games genres by not being designed for pure entertainment. Although serious games can be entertaining, their main purpose is to train or educate users. [42] Ritterfeld et al. [43] emphasizes that serious games is a genre that explicitly focuses on education. A serious game should always work as intended, contributing to self-guided, enjoyable and therefore a deeply sustained learning experience [43].

In the past years serious games has become a hot topic world wide. Interest in using games for education, motviation and change behaviour has increased rapidly. A man called Ben Sawyer facilitated this movement and formed the

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Serious Games Initiative, which has been successful in attracting an increasing number of designers and educators [43]. During the initalation of this movement, the developers in the serious game genre took a distinct stand against only-for entertainment games, and claimed that the content of a serious game was highly desirable for an educator’s perspective. They said that playing these games was advantegous for the player, because it facilitated learning experiences and because it had no negative or harmful impacts [43].

The goal for most serious games are to facilitate gamers learning through the use of characteristics to create a game play that does not focus solely on the use of masked drill activities. [44] An example of a serious game is a game called Virtual U. Virtual U is designed to facilitate students learning management practices for higher education institutions. It is a strategy game where the students manipulate a number of 180 administrative and management variables that have an impact on a fictional university. There is no right way to play this game, and each student decides how they want to manage the fictional university. Regardless of how they choose to play the game, the students can learn the complexities of higher education administration while achieving vastly different goals.

In many situations the audience of a serious game is children. In this thesis a math game is designed for primary-school children in the age of 8 to 12 years old, its important to know how to design with and for children. Designing with and for children e.g [45], [46] is a challenging task. During the past two decades or so, multitudes of techniques have been developed and applied for designing technology with children and for children. Many of them are based on participatory design techniques e.g [47] and adapted to intergenerational design teams, see [48] for an overview.

2.2 Summary

As a conclusion to this chapter I have to say a few words about the reasons these topics has been included in a literature search. Topics like multi-touch tables, collaboration, gamification and serious games are highly relevant to the research done in this thesis, it is therefore important to obtain a solid theoretical understanding before conducting a design process. Research done on multi-touch tables is relevant because the final result of the game is supposed to run on this platform, it is therefore important to know how it can be used to achieve good support in terms of collaboration. Collaboration in multi-touch applications is relevant because two

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or more participants can utilize a multi-touch table simultaneously, information describing how games/applications can be designed for this purpose is therefore important. Gamifcation and serious games are relevant because it says something about how people (and children) are motivated to use an application or play a game. This is also relevant in regards to the second research question on this thesis. As a last, I would like to point to that basic theoretical understanding of the topics used can be an essential factor in how much you achieve throughout the design process and from the people participating in it.

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Methods

3.1 Research approach and methodology

3.1.1 Qualitative research methods

A qualitative research method investigates the why and how of decision making, not just what, where and when. It produces information only for the particular case studied and any more general conclusions are only propositions [49]. It is normal for qualitative research to focus on small samples rather than big ones;

this has been applied throughout this thesis as you can see from the design process in chapter 4. Workshops, brainstorming sessions and interviews have only been focusing on one part of the game-design. In addition to this all the sessions have included a relatively small number of participants; this facilitates an in-depth knowledge of the task at hand, and gives me as a researcher an understanding of the participants decision making.

3.1.2 Research paradigm

“Human beings cannot be studied using models developed for the physical sciences because humans are qualitatively different from natural events. The interpretive paradigm supports the belief that reality is constructed by subjective perception and predictions cannot be made.” Also Myers and Avison [50] describes interpretive research in this way:

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“Interpretive researchers start out with the assumption that access to reality [...] is only through social constructions such as language, consciousness and shared meanings. The philosophical base of interpretive research is hermeneutics and phenomenology.” [50]

This thesis aims to focus on the social construction of meaning. This means that people should be studied as active agents with free will, purposes, goals and intentions. People make decisions in accordance with their subjective understanding of the situation. Given the intentions of this thesis and the subjective nature of user centered design, the only fitting research paradigm is interpretive research.

3.2 Methodology

3.2.1 Grounded theory

Grounded theory is a systematic methodology in the social sciences involving the discovery of theory through the analysis of data [51]. This thesis does not utilize grounded theory, but uses a similar approach. Throughout this thesis I felt that grounded theorys openness fit my research the best. Unlike other methodologies it does not start with creating a hypothesis, the first step is to collect data through a variety of different methods. Also, the grounded theory approach to qualitative data analysis, e.g coding of interview data and observations helped in the analysis of data.

3.3 Design Approach

3.3.1 User centered design

In broad terms,“user centered design” (UCD) is a type of user interface design and a process in which the needs, wants and limitations of end users of a product are give extensive attention at each stage of the design process. [52] The main difference from other design-approaches is that UCD tries to optimize the product around how the users want the product to be, rather than forcing a change in the users behavior in order to accommodate the product.

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3.3.2 Why user centered design?

I chose to take advantage of UCD because I wanted to let the children themselves influence the final product. Having multiple stages such as concept development, design decisions and prototyping made UCD the best choice. As a designer I needed my end-users to test the validity of my assumptions with regard to their behavior in real world tests. This kind of testing was necessary because I was not able to understand intuitively what a child of 8 12 years old would perceive my game and the complexity it could contain.

3.4 Research methods

3.4.1 Data Collection Methods

Interviews

An interview is a conversation between two or more people where questions are asked by the interviewer to elicit facts or statements from the interviewee.[53] An interview can be unstructured, structured or semi-structured. An unstructured interview is more like a open conversation between the interviewer and the interviewee. Usually you decide on a topic in advance and you have an open discussion about it. A structured interview is a quantitative research method where the questions are predefined and asked accordingly with no opportunity to divert. A semi-structured interview is more open. You might have some predefined questions as well as some open question allowing new ideas to be brought up during the interview. I have used this method to gather information and discuss ideas and design during this thesis. See section4.3.1.

Passive observation

Observing people or things in their natural habitat without interfering with the flow of actions, the people or things you are observing or the environment is called passive observation. It’s most commonly referred to as being a fly on the wall. I chose to use this observation technique in order to gain information and investigate the use of multi-touch devices amongst children in the Oslo area.

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Litterature Survey

A literature survey is a good way to collect data about previous research on a specific topic. The definition of a literature survey is a text written by someone to consider the critical points of current knowledge including substantive findings as well as theoretical and methodological contributions to a particular topic [54].

In order to know what has been done before, a literature survey is an essential method. It is essential because as a researcher, one needs to know what other researchers already have discovered and tested. In this way you avoid doing du- plicate work, as well as you get an overview on where to start when conducting your own research.

Why Use Litterature Survey?

“Researchers working in isolation are doomed to repeat the mistakes made by their predecessors.” [55] This quote by Cooper Cooper [55] describes one of the main reasons of why I chose to include literature survey as one of my research-methods in this thesis. As I am new to the multi-touch and gamification field it was important to build a solid foundation of theory and information before conducting my own design process. Going into the design process as well as the prototyping stages of my work the literature review made it a lot easier to define my goal. In addition to this it gave me a set of guidelines to follow when designing for a multi-touch table.

3.4.2 Design Methods

Brainstorming

A common technique used to generate ideas is called brainstorming. The technique is used within a group and has its focus on getting the participants to speak their ideas whatever they might be. There should be no criticism of the ideas that are proposed and the more ideas the better. I chose to use this technique as one of my methods to generate game-ideas in the concept-development phase of my design process. The session is described in detail in section 4.3.2.

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Mind map

Mind maps are like a sorted diagram often used together with brainstorming. A mind map has a central question or topic in the middle, and all the ideas generated from the brainstorming session is sorted and placed along branches that flows outwards from the center. It is used a visualized tool to classify and structure the ideas and can be used as a reminder at a later stage in the design process. I used this creative technique to sort and categorize all of the ideas that emerged from the brainstorming session to get a better and more conclusive overview of the ideas. The mind-map is described in section4.3.3.

Workshops

A workshop is a constructive meeting between different stakeholders where the goal is to achieve a set of predefined goals. The participants work together to find solutions and give feedback on a particular design, concept or prototype.

Workshops can be used in different phases of a project. It can be used early in the design process to define basic guidelines and features, or it can be used later in a test phase where the goal of the workshop is to test and get feedback on a more or less complete version of a prototype. The workshops conducted in this thesis is described in detail in section 4.4.1 and 4.8.2

Why use workshops?

In most projects you develop something for someone other than yourselves. In order to know what your ’customer’ wants, it’s important to include them in the project. There are many ways to do this, and workshops are one of them. In accordance to participatory design, I felt that it was important to let the target group influence the decision making-process, as well as give feedback on different parts of the multi-touch game. It is always difficult for a developer to see the world through someone elses eyes, but using workshops as a method shrinks this gap and makes it easier to understand problems from their point of view.

3.4 Interviews An interview is a conversation between two or more people where questions are asked by the interviewer to elicit facts or statements from the interviewee.[16] An interview can be unstructured, structured or semi-structured. An unstructured interview is more like a open conversation between the interviewer and the interviewee. Usually you decide on a topic in advance and you have an

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open discussion about it. A structured interview is a quantitative research method where the questions are predefined and asked accordingly with no opportunity to divert. A semi-structured interview is more open. You might have some predefined questions as well as some open question allowing new ideas to be brought up during the interview. I have used this method to gather information and discuss ideas and design during this thesis.

3.4.3 Card sorting

“Card sorting is a simple technique in user experience design where a group of users inexperienced with design are guided to generate a category tree or folkson- omy.” [56] It was used during the design process of this thesis to identify problems related to multi-touch tables and shared space, thus not really to create interesting categories for the game, but rather to observe how the users performed card sorting. The categories I was interested in had to do with how often they interfered with each others work or how well they cooperated during the task.

3.5 Ethical Considerations

In working with children, ethical considerations are always important. The children have participated in my workshops with full consent of their parents and by their own desire. Their privacy was never compromised. No videos or photos where they could be identified were taken. No information on the identity of participants was ever stored anywhere. The children could withdraw at any point, no questions asked, from the study. They were always treated with respect and gratitude for their participation in this research. No financial reward was offered to the children, but every effort was made to give them value through making the workshops fun.

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Design process

4.1 Concept

4.1.1 Introduction

In this chapter the design process is described in detail. The design process is described in terms of three different stages; concept development, prototype and evaluation. In the course of two iterations of these stages, the design process focus on how to optimize the game around what the users can, want or need to use the product. It builds on the methodology and theory of user-centered design (UCD) and aims to take development and design-decisions based on the findings done together with the users. This chapter will describe the intentions and strategy prior to the initialization of the design process. How the concept was developed based on observations, explorative workshops and interviews with key stakeholders, as well as the process of making low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototypes based on these results. Each iteration ends with an evaluation of the findings which is used to determine the further course of the design process.

4.1.2 Intentions and strategy

Before going into detail about the design process its necessary to describe my intentions and strategy heading into it. Already from the beginning when I chose to do a paper on educational and collaborative multi-touch games I had a vision of what I wanted to achieve from the design process. From a standpoint of knowing

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the terms education and collaboration, but not knowing nearly enough about how these concepts worked in interaction with each other and how my target group perceived the two, it became crucial to use the design process as a way to expand my vision. In tight collaboration with the users I wanted to find out what my users would envision a good educational and collaborative multi-touch game. To do this I chose to take advantage of principles building on user-centered design- theory. I chose to use this methodology because there are so many unresolved design-related questions about the game I want to develop. I will use the design process to find answers to these questions and then use the findings to make decisions about the development and the design of the game. When the design process is finalized, I want to have a result that in a big way is influenced by the users themselves. My intentions are to provide the users with the idea of using games in an educational setting; I will then provide the right tools for the users to collaborate around that idea hopefully resulting in valuable ideas. In this way I can truly play the role as the designer and really see through the eyes of my target group. I chose to divide the design process into six parts, each building on the practices of user-centered design theory.

Strategy Making up the strategy is to define where you want to be with your product when the design process is done. I have described my strategy together with my intentions in the section above

Concept development (Research)Doing the research is an essential part of the design process and is used to form and concretize the concept through a data-gathering process. This is where I conduct different data-gathering- sessions with different stakeholders. Brainstorming, Mind mapping, explorative workshops and interviews are some of the techniques and methods described later in this chapter.

Proof of concept (Analysis) When the concept development is done and enough data is gathered, the proof of concept phase can begin. This is the part where I prove my concept worthy of it’s existence. Do the users find the concept interesting and meaningful?

Lessons learned (Specification)Built on the findings from each iteration I created a list of lessons learned. The list is used to create or develop the prototype further.

Prototype This is where both low-fidelity mockups and high-fidelity prototypes building on all the previous phases will be made. These prototypes

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should reflect the findings from all the previous phases and offer a good visualized result of the iteration.

Evaluation Last but not least, the results are evaluated. These results are used to decide on whether a new iteration of the design process should be initialized.

Figure 4.1: User centered design approach. Source: [57]

4.1.3 Target group

The target group will be young children stretching from the age of 8 - 12 years old.

There are several reasons why I chose to work with this specific target group, one being that they are fairly easy to get a hold of and also because the multi-touch equipment on the University is not moveable and I therefore need the users to come to me instead of me bringing the technology to them. The target group is children that currently go to primary school; technology is most likely already a part of their everyday life, and I hope that this will contribute towards the understanding and acceptance of the research I want to conduct with them. I hope that they are as most children, eager to learn and eager to contribute towards a better learning environment for themselves and others.

4.2 Concept formulation

As we all know and many of you have experienced yourself, children love to play games. Different game-like activities as well as board games has for many years been the king and queen of the game-arena. In recent times and with the rise of the technological society as we know it, games have evolved from what used to be

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physical board games to interactive games that can be played from anywhere at any time as long as you have the right technological device to do it. So why have these interactive games become so popular amongst children? Why do they play these games so often? Is it all for fun or do they learn something from the games as well? Observations of people working and playing on these devices have led me to believe that game based learning on a multi-touch device could be very useful as a motivational tool for young children. Personal experience dictates that many have trouble finding the right motivation in certain subjects at school; they dont find the traditional learning tools as exciting as they did before. Children like this could find new motivation in educational games; they could have fun and at the same time learn the intended curriculum for that course. I wanted to design and develop a collaborative and educational multi-touch game building on the practices of game-based learning. The idea became to design a so called serious game. (See section 2.1.3)

4.3 Data gathering

4.3.1 Interview

To include another key stakeholder in the data-gathering process, I chose to conduct an interview with a teacher. The interviewee has been working as a teacher for 6 years and with students that are 10-11 years old, hence students that fit my target group. She currently teaches subjects like English, Religion and ethics, Nor- wegian and gym in a school situated in the Oslo area. The interview took place in my home apartment, the atmosphere was relaxed and the interview was recorded with consent from the interviewee (See Appendix A for the consent form). The goal for this interview was to get good and relevant feedback from a stakeholder that knew what is important when trying to educate young children. I wanted to find out how students work together on tasks, how they respond to new technology and generally get information on what to consider when making my game as good as possible. Following is a summary of the interview. The transcription of the interview can be found in AppendixB

Both the initial workshop and the interview gave interesting and useful results in terms of useful information for me as a designer and confirmation that my idea was on the right track. For example, the workshop was helpful for me as to understand how children think about new technology as learning tools. They gave me useful