Usability in Serious Games: A Model for Small Development Teams

Teams developing serious games are often small and face both time and budget constraints. Although its importance is well-established, iterative usability testing is often forgone. Further, serious games present unique challenges that they must be usable, enjoyable, and effective. It is necessary that the game's design is evaluated at several stages during development to ensure that all of these objectives are met. A model for incorporating usability testing into development that addresses these three elements is presented, along with guidelines for implementation focused specifically on small serious games development teams. By applying this model to development should ensure that developers are able to efficiently produce more effective serious games. Usability is an extremely important part of any development project. Game development is no exception. Usability is one of the central elements in the game development process and is strongly associated with the overall experience of the player. For example, if a player cannot read the text on screen or if the controls are difficult to master, this results in poor usability and detracts from the overall experience. Serious games, in particular, present unique challenges with regard to effective usability testing. Briefly, serious games have been introduced into a growing number of domains including education, therapy, and personnel training, with the goal of providing a method to supplement traditional means of learning. Aligning with cognitive load theory, if overall usability fails and all of the player's effort is put toward mastering controls, not much attention and cognitive reserve remains to focus on the actual content. The player simply will not learn because they are too distracted by