Games With Safety Training Purposes in the Industry: Game Design Method and Its Demonstration

Abstract

Work accidents are a concern for the industry as they can generate human, material, and economic losses. One way to mitigate them is to conduct efficient safety training, but they cannot always arouse the necessary interest and engagement of those trained. Games with a purpose are tools widely used for training in different contexts. They are identified as innovative, immersive, and attractive approaches, but they are complex to develop. This article presents SafetyPlay Game Design (SpGD), a structured method for designing safety training games with well-defined steps that support translating training elements into an immersive and playful game environment. Since we seek to build an artifact as an intervention to a problem in a real context, we based the research methodology on Action Research to conduct the investigations. Therefore, the intervention in the context of security training continued with creating and demonstrating the SpGD method based on the construction of a digital game for training. In this way, the evaluation undertaken in this research considered two moments: i) the ability of SpGD to develop the game, considering when we evaluated it by volunteers regarding game experience and perception of safety training, and ii) the validated method through interviews with game designers, experts in designing training games. The results point to evidence that the SpGD method supported the design of a game that allowed a positive gaming experience considered by game designers to be viable and useful for this purpose, in addition to allowing people to learn training concepts and risks. Therefore, this research contributes to the game design field and the industry, providing opportunities for creating interactive training that can complement traditional security training.