Design, Evaluation, and Extension of Serious Games for Training in Mine Safety

Abstract

New approaches are needed to improve outcomes for safety training in hazardous industries. In this dissertation, following a detailed needs assessment and field studies of training in the mining industry, I will develop and validate a new approach for safety training that couples advancements in "serious games" with user interaction techniques to enhance training workflows. This approach is two-fold. First, the training content, practices, and outcomes are illustrated through non-linear stories with consequence-driven game play in a realistic, "sandbox" world. Second, the conventional game interfaces are extended using emerging natural user interfaces and complexity management techniques to improve the usability of complex data sets common in the application domain. MineSAFE, a custom-built platform to create serious games for training in mine safety, has been developed to enable the proposed approach. Several games that were created with this platform, including Harry's Hard Choices, will be presented. I will also discuss usability studies that have been carried out in realistic training situations to evaluate the user acceptance of the serious games approach for mine safety training. These studies suggest a high level of acceptance among domain users. Finally, I discuss workspace-level extensions to elevate serious games into an Augmented Virtual Reality, where gestures and tangible interaction drive the gaming experience. Although this work focuses on training for the mining industry, my hope is that the insights and technologies provided here will be transferable to other domains where safety, emergency response, and complicated information play a major role in shaping training outcomes.