For my thesis projects, i have been approaching my thesis committee, field experts and peers to collect feedback on design, development and conceptual framework of my project. Having an existing alpha version of the game has helped me immensely in collecting better quality
- I received feedback from Clancy Blaire from NYU who is an expert on Executive Functions that the underlying task in the game is representative of the Executive Function task targeted by the game. Moreover, he suggested other tasks which could be incorporated in the game to trigger some aspects of the Executive Function which are currently missing.
- I received feedback from Melissa Biles regarding game data logging and player modeling. We discussed ways of adapting the game in different ways using game telemetry. On a conceptual level, she suggested using an emotional framework for adaptation instead of a very messy construct of flow, which was my initial idea.
- I received Feedback from Jan Plass regarding the conceptual argumentation of my theory of change. After i presented my logic model, he pointed out that my argumentation was backed up by theories from conflicting domains. This was because, theory of adaptivity in learning games didn’t completely apply to my project, which is about cognitive training and not learning in the conventional sense. He also, suggested that i should look into research which shows higher cognitive gains from difficult Video Games as compared to simple games and use that to back up the argumentation of using an adaptive algorithm to strain the cognitive abilities of players.
- I received feedback from Ralph Vacca regarding the design of the existing game and the development of procedural content generation algorithm for the adaptivity. He pointed out possible UX issues in the game mechanics. Moreover he helped me surface assumptions in my logic model and gave tips on eliminating possible confounding variables which might undermine the results of my research findings.
Image Source: Scott Maxwell
Shashank Pawar 