Designing games for improving the software development process

Abstract

With the proliferation of relevant technologies that enables interactive social engagements, games became a strong driving power for next generation social environments. One of the reason for this is that there is an engaging nature in both digital and non-digital games, which is also suitable for creating serious kind of interactions such as teaching, training, learning, etc. Recently, researchers have started developing games or game-like applications in particular domains such as education, management, medicine. Although there are loads of empirical studies about game-based learning in general, scholars from information systems, computer science and software engineering domains have only a few attempts to develop and use the specific properties of games in their context-dependent environments. This workshop paper takes a look at some of these efforts and discusses about the pros and cons of such approaches. It is also argued that using well-designed, validated and pertinent non-digital games could be beneficial for improving the software development process. In particular, such approaches can be transformed into useful tools for teaching information systems and software engineering undergraduate or post-graduate students the fundamentals of information systems and software engineering.