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DESIGN OF ADAPTATIVE VIDEOGAMEINTERFACES: A PRACTICAL CASE OF USEIN SPECIAL EDUCATIONJ.L. González Sánchez, F.L. Gutiérrez, M.J. Cabrera, N. Padilla ZeaVideogames and E-Learning Research Lab. (LIVE) – GEDES. Software EngineeringDepartment. University of Granada, C/ Daniel Saucedo Aranda, s/n, E-18007, Granada, Spain.E-Mail:{joseluis, fgutierr, mcabrera, npadilla}@ugr.esAbstract: The use of new technological and learning methods that help toimprove the learning process has produced the inclusion of the videogames as active elements in the classrooms. Videogames are ideal learningtools since they provide training skills, promote independence, increaseand improve students’ concentration and attention. For special educationstudents with learning difficulties, it is very important to adapt the game toeach student’s cognitive level and skills. The present work describes ourexperience in the design and the use of videogames as new forms to createdidactic learning tools to pupils with serious communication problems asautism, dysphasia, ictus or cerebral palsy.Keywords: Design of Videogames, Interactive Systems, User Interfaces,Playability, Special Education.1. IntroductionHumans, through history, have had the ability to administrate their leisuretime and have used this factor as cultural development. According toHuizinga [1], the game with the relationship and abilities that humansacquire with the playing process is one of the most important aspects in thehuman social-cultural evolution. Videogames are the XXI th century games.Videogames [2] enable knowledge to be developed through gamecontents and increase cognitive abilities through play, but a specialchild/player has his/her own characteristics that make him/her unique inthe world. In these situation it’s a very important factor that didacticalvideogames must adapt to the player, not only to the context, also to

2interaction techniques, user interface and the didactical contents to developthe most efficacious didactical videogames.In this paper we will describe our proposal to design and develop“player centred videogames” and apply them to a practical context: SpecialEducation. We will describe how to introduce the educational contents intoa game structure and how to readapt the videogame interface to make thesecontents and game dynamics (user interface and user interaction) the mostsuitable as possible to users/players. The second section of this paperpresents various considerations and ideas about special educationvideogames and how to develop personalized videogames using our gamearchitecture and design techniques. Section 3 presents an example of ourideas, a videogame to learn the vowels. Finally, Section 4 outlines ourconclusions and future lines of work.2. Learning by playing, playing to learn: The Design ofAdaptative Videogames to the PlayerCan we learn playing videogames? This is a question largely debated byspecialists in psychology and pedagogy. A videogame could be an unequalpedagogical tool in special education classroom. We should take intoaccount a series of user’s factors in order to get the most effective possibleeducational process when we are designing an educational videogame:Motivation, Attention, Concentration and Emotion [3, 4, 5, 6]. But, inSpecial Education field the game must be easy to personalize using theplayer’s cognitive and physical characteristics because every child isunique in the classroom.Our didactical videogames proposal starts from this main idea: Theprincipal child activity must be playing; the consequence of this action(playing) will be that the child learns the educative contents in an implicitway.It is essential to design and to develop a high quality videogame thatthe game process stimulates player’s fun and entertainment. Wedenominate Playability the set of properties to describe the player’sexperience with a particular game system, that the principal goal isfun/entertainment to the player in a satisfactory and credible way, playingalone or with other players. Playability reflects the player’s pleasure,experience, sensations and feelings when he/she is playing the videogame.In the Design Process, the first step is creating a complete StoryLine. Itmust be attractive to the future players who play the game. A good story

offers a “good connection” between game and player, and helps to catchthe player’s attention and consequently to create crucial motivationmechanisms that guarantee the interest of the child to play the game. Thehistory should motivate, excite and thrill the child/player.The following step is the Gameplay Design. It includes all playerexperiences during the interaction (what the player can do and how to do)with game systems. For example: goals, rules, learning curve, etc. Thisterm is used to describe the overall experience of playing the gameexcluding the aspects of graphics, sound, and the storyline. In GameplayDesign for the Special Education field it is very important to offer afeedback, focused on the cognitive need, for each action. Player’s errorshould be corrected without causing sadness or discouragement. It’srecommendable to use a main character or hero, who acts as amediator/guide in the learning process and game. This learning processshould be in rise, based on multi-levels or missions, where the level ofdifficulty increases gradually. Rewards offer an extra motivationsatisfactionfactor, they allow us to create mechanisms that influence theplayer to self-improvement and advance while playing.In the educational contents design it is crucial to identify the player’sprofile, his/her limitations and cognitive capabilities in order to choose thebest interaction and user interface mechanisms. We have to structure andadapt the didactic unit objectives to the player’s characteristics and goalsof the game. The educational contents should be introduced into the gamestructure in a hidden way.Our main goal is to develop special education videogames that adapt tothe different player profiles. In order to do that we proposes a softwareevolution framework, based in three-layer structure: the meta-game, themeta-phase and the meta-level. With this meta-structure we model thebehaviour and the functionality of our game engine and videogamemechanics: interaction, feedback, etc., independently from the player skillsor concepts to be learned.Meta-game layer offers the basic game architecture for training with aspecific child. It has two dimensions: The Accessibility dimension, whichdescribes the user interface and the interaction characteristics according tothe player’s skill profile and Gameplay dimension, which defines theprincipal characteristics of the game (goals, multi-levels or missions,rewards, etc).Meta-phase layer involves the educational contents. Finally, the Metalevellayer allows defining educational exercises to train the conceptdefined in the specific phase. This game definition is saved in binary files3

4to use them with the game engine to run a specific game. We can use thegame reports to readapt the difficulty of levels dynamically, introducingadaptation/personalization rules (e.g.: frequency of errors and hits) into thegame engine. A graphical model of our adaptative/evolutive gamearchitecture is represented in Fig. 1.Fig.1. Adaptative/Evolutive Videogames Architecture3. A Practical Example: Leoncio and the Lost Vowels IslandAs an example of videogames using the ideas that we have presented inthis paper, we will introduce our prototype of didactical videogame appliedto special education: “Leoncio and the Lost Vowels Island” on NintendoDS [2]. The main educational objective is to learn the vowels across therelationship between the stimuli that the game presents. With the correctstimulus we also introduce erroneous stimuli, in these cases the playershould discriminate to obtain the correct result. The game is based onlearning method of reading/writing call “SuperLecto-Escritura” [8]. Inevery moment during the game exists parallelism between phoneme, textand pictograms (vowel pronunciation, vowel writing and vowel graphicrepresentation). The development of the learning of vowels comes throughan incremental way, using for it a multilevel system that is grouped in

5different phases. In each level, thanks to the audio device, the child canidentify the phoneme of each pictogram touching on it with the stylus orusing sweeping technique in each possible option, emphasizing thepictogram and the letter to be stimulated. When the child respondscorrectly (he/she correlates pictogram with pictogram, later pictogram withvowel and finally with audio), the game shows an appropriate feedbackand emphasizes the pictogram and audio with the vowel. If the child fails,the game emphasizes the right answer and encourages the child to re-selecta new answer. If the process of selection is right, in the following level ofthe vowel-phase, the pictogram will decrease its clarity, appearing theletter, which is “hidden” behind the pictogram. At the end the childcorrelates only the vowel with the pictogram. If the process andassimilation have been right at the end of the phase, the child will havebeen able to associate a pictogram with the vowel, thanks to a directtraining and implicitly, the child acquires the concept of vowel phonemeand completes the triple association pictogram-vowel-phoneme, the basicof reading/writing learning.The game has a life system with a number of hearts assigned to theplayers, it is another motivation factor. If Leoncio/player fails, he loseshealth.. An example of a game level is represented in Fig. 2.When you work with videogames in special education they have acrucial factor. Children must have to adapt to the game, and this processmakes the learning process more complex. Our videogame include anadaptative process, because the game could personalize to theplayers/children cognitive/physics requirements for example: theinteraction methods, playability or contents presentation using accessibilitymechanisms to rapidly adapt the game to several cognitive user profiles.Fig.2. Example Level in “Leoncio and the Lost Vowels Island”

64. Conclusions and Future WorksIn this paper we have presented our proposal of player centred videogamesfor special education, following the idea “Learning by playing, playing tolearn”. The learning process must be implicit in the videogame dynamics.We are designing a visual platform to create evolving videogamesfollowing a development process in which aspects as user interface,educational contents, multimedia and interaction methods are described inseparated and incremental steps. To improve the playability and the gameefficacy, we use entertainment devices as Nintendo DS. Finally, we havepresented one of our prototypes: “Leoncio and the Lost Vowels Island”.In next months, we will begin an experiment, with a group of childrento check the efficacy of our method in “special schools” and elementaryschools. We will keep on working in the software evolution frameworkdevelopment and videogame theoretic model that allow us working withadaptation/personalization techniques. Also, we are working in defineplayability attributes and properties/qualities and use them in thevideogame software development to obtain more fun and playablevideogames to play alone or in company.Acknowledgments. This study and work is financed by the Consejería de Educación (EducationDepartment) de la Junta de Andalucía (of the Council of Andalusia) as a part of SC@UT Projectand the F.P.U Programme of the Ministry of Education and Science, Spain.5. References[1] Huzinga, J.: Homo Ludens. Ed. Alianza (2000)[2] González Sánchez, J. L.; Cabrera, M.; Gutiérrez, F. L. Diseño de Videojuegos aplicadosa la Educación Especial. VIII Congreso Internacional de Interacción Persona-Ordenador (INTERACCION-2007. pp. 35-45 (2007).[3] Malone, T.W. & Lepper, M.R. "Intrinsic Motivation and Instructional Effectiveness inComputer-based Education." In R.E. Snow & M.J.Farr (Eds.) Aptitude, Learning andInstruction. Volume 2: Conative and affective process analyses. pp. 243-286. LawrenceErlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, N. J (1987)[4] Keller, J.M., & Kopp, T.W. An application of the ARCS model of motivational design.In C.M. Regeluth (eds.), Instructional theories in action: Lessons illustrating selectedtheories and models. pp. 289-320. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. New York (1987)[5] Csíkszentmihályi, M. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper and Row, .New York (1990)[6] Norman, D. A., Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things. BasicBooks, New York (2004)[7] García, C. V; Luciano, M. C., SuperLecto-Escritura. Programa para el aprendizaje de laLectura y Escritura. Ediciones Némesis, S. L. ISBN: 84-922930-8-X