Games for UML software design

Abstract

In this paper we introduce the idea of using games as a driving metaphor for design tools which support designers working in UML. We use as our basis a long strand of work in verification and elsewhere. A key difference from that strand, however, is that we propose the incremental development of the rules of a game as part of the design process. We will argue that this approach may have two main advantages. First, it provides a natural means for tools to interactively help the designer to explore the consequences of design decisions. Second, by providing a smooth progression from informal exploration of decisions to full verification, it has the potential to lower the commitment cost of using formal verification. We discuss a simple example of a possible game development. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003.