Using a Task Modeling Formalism in the Design of Serious Games for Emergency Medical Procedures

Abstract

Lack of standard methodologies to guide and organize game design can result in longer and less predictable game production processes. Moreover, the need for interaction among domain experts (providing the instructional content) and game developers is a peculiar aspect of serious games that makes their development more difficult. This paper focuses on the design of games for procedural training, and proposes to adopt a task modeling technique (ConcurTaskTrees, CTT) in the modeling of training scenarios. In particular, we show how CTT can be used to (i) analyze and structure pedagogical content about the procedures, (ii) support and monitor procedure execution in the game. We also describe how we employed CTT in the design of a serious game for training nurses in emergency medical procedures on disabled patients.