“qsgame-modela serious game product quality model”

Zusammenfassung

Context: Serious games (SGs) are innovative software applications that, although are widely used in education are also applied to a broad spectrum of application areas e.g. government, corporate and healthcare. Since SGs are used in diverse areas of society and their users are growing every day, SGs are applications that may have a high social impact. SG quality could consequently become a critical issue that must be evaluated. The ISO quality standards are relevant to all software products, they can be used to specify, measure and evaluate the quality of any software product, including SGs. However, these standards are generic and this generic nature, has led the standards to fix some high-level quality concepts which can be tailored to specific domains. Because the relevance of SGs and their quality, there is a need of a quality model specific to SGs that allow SG developers and designers evaluate its quality. Objective: Despite the fact that, the quality of SGs has been addressed by researchers, there is no general quality model that considers all the characteristics, sub-characteristics and measures that can be applied to any kind of SG. The goal of this PhD Thesis is therefore to Define and validate a product quality model for Serious Games. Method: The research proposal, the QSGame-Model, is a product quality model adapted from the ISO 25010 standard that is specific to SGs. The QSGame-Model considers all the characteristics, sub-characteristics, attributes and measures that are applicable to any kind of SG. Moreover, to facilitate the quality evaluation of an SG using the QSGame-Model, a QSGame-Evaluation process has been defined. In addition, to automate the application of the QSGame-Model, the QSGame-Tool has been developed. Result: The attributes of QSGame-Model proposed are understandable and important to experts on SG development and teaching according to a results of a survey applied to them. In addition, the reliability and validity of the measures of the QSGame-Model were confirmed through the execution of two quasi-experiments and replica. Conclusion: The QSGame-Model is a product quality model, specific for SG, agreed on by experts on SG development and teaching. The QSGame-Model considers attributes which are not considered in the standard product quality model and is useful in practice, in order to allow SG designers and developers to evaluate and improve the quality of the SGs they build.