Design and Development of a Serious Game for the Teaching of Requirements Elicitation and Analysis

Requirements elicitation and analysis is one of the topics covered in Software Engineering, Requirements Engineering (RE) and other subjects belonging to the group, which are usually taught to the undergraduate computer science students. Requirements elicitation and analysis are crucial to the software development as mistakes made at this stage will negatively impact the subsequent stages of development. Thus, it is important to ensure students' firm understanding of the topic. One way to improve their understanding is by improving their interest and engagement in the topic. Taking advantage of younger generation's inclination towards games, means to increase students' interest and understanding of the topic using serious games were proposed. However, most of the existing games thus far are not focusing on the requirements elicitation and analysis in detail and are limited to only one real-life scenario per game. This research therefore attempted to address the gap by designing and developing a digital serious game for requirements elicitation and analysis topic that aims to improve students' understanding of the topic by applying the knowledge gained from lectures to a number of real-life scenarios provided in the game. The content of the game was designed based on the learning objectives to be attained and its overall design and development followed the ADDIE model comprising analysis, design, development, implementation and evaluation phases. This paper however focuses on the design and development phases of the game. A pilot test was performed at the end of the development phase where the game's usability and its ability to attain the learning objectives of the topic were assessed. However, the test only covered the first level of the game. Analysis performed on the test results showed that while most of the assessed learning objectives were satisfactorily attained, rooms for improvement with regards to game usability were seen, particularly on the difficulty and navigability.