PRE2017 3 Groep9 - Future Research

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Future Research

Based on the results from our research we believe that it is worth it to do further research into this subject. In order to help with this we will explain ways to improve our game design based on the feedback that we got from the test group. As for the test itself, we believe that for further research it would be valuable to do a larger test, with more words and a longer time limit, for reasons that will be explained below.

Time limits

As stated in the PRE2017 3 Groep9 - Results, the main reason for the game not being as efficient is the time it takes to complete a rotation. From observing the test subjects we noticed that a lot of the time was spent trying to guess the meaning of the words as well as reading the initial explanations of the minigames. As far as the guessing of the words is considered, we believe this can be easily solved by putting a time limit on this part of the game, that way when a test subject does not know the meaning of the word within that time limit he will be given the answer and continue on. As for the explanations, this is not something that can be solved easily, since without them the user would not know what to do. One way of solving the problem could be by giving the explanation in a different way, such as showing them for a set time at the start of the minigame. Another way is making the controls similar for every minigame, in our current implementation, we used both the mouse and keyboard, however using only the mouse would likely be better. In the long term however we believe these explanations would not be that big of a problem.

Minigames

For improving the minigames, we got the feedback that the minigames were not linked to the words in a sufficient amount. To solve this it would be good to show the word during the minigame, this can either be at the top or bottom of the screen, or more integrated into the games themselves. For example, take the word pie, on every pie in the minigame the word torta could be shown in order to keep reminding the user of the actual word.

Test Set-up

The test set-up for future research could also be altered, we believe that the more one uses the game the more intuitive it becomes to use, which would decrease the time people spend doing basically nothing, as explained in the time limit section. Therefore a test set-up with more words to study and a longer time limit could still test the efficiency of the method and provide a more realistic setting. We believe this longer time limit for a more realistic setting could on its own change the results gotten from the game, since its a new method and having a longer time to adapt to it could improve results.

We also want to test which method works better for learning on long term. We believe that due to the fact that we mainly use the visual memory, as explained in PRE2017 3 Groep9 - State of the Art people should be able to memorize words longer after they have played our game, than if they were to study the traditional way. Research long-term memory was impossible in this course since we would have had to stay in contact with our research subject, and you would want to test time periods like 2 weeks or even a month. This was impossible in a course of 7 weeks, since we needed at least 4 weeks to develop the game.

Other improvements

As for the other feedback that we got, most of that is accounted for in our PRE2017 3 Groep9 - Future Concepts and PRE2017 3 Groep9 - Game Concept, but could not be implemented in time for the tests. These include o.a. teaching words both Italian to English and the other way around, as well as other general improvements such as a score system for long term use.