PERMA-RUN
Inspiration
I was interested in Safety & Security when I began my master's thesis. Being an avid gamer and having a keen interest in serious games, I realized the challenges in operationalizing security concepts as game mechanics. Cybersecurity has always been regarded as a tough subject to preach and, it is an important element across many domains. This intrigued me to dive deeper and uncover the research gaps to design and develop a gamified solution in a user-centred manner. I worked with a Ph.D. student who acted as my mentor for the design and development phase of the project.
Preface
Here, I have split the whole project into three components - Design, Development, and Research, for ease of presentation. I followed a user-centric approach to design and develop the game while conducting evaluative and experimental research at strategic points to inform design decisions.
Design Phase
After completing the secondary research for discovering the research gaps, I designed three game prototypes based on popular persuasive game designs. I followed B.J.Fogg's 8-step design process and the PSD Framework to design the persuasive games in a rapid iterative manner with feedback from subject matter experts. Modelling the smartphone security use cases for each game design was one of the challenges that intrigued me to push further. I designed the prototypes with Proto.io, Unity Game Engine, and some assets with Inkscape.
Design (Case Study)Development Phase
After considering the constraints of various resources, I decided to develop PERMARUN: A 2D platformer to improve user awareness about smartphone security. I developed the game using Unity Game Engine and followed the basic game development etiquettes for ease of iteration. The game has undergone three iterations, and I'd publish it on Playstore soon.
Development (Details)Research Phase
Initially, I started with a systematic literature review to explore security & privacy. After designing & developing PERMARUN, I conducted a Heuristic Evaluation for Playability to uncover initial design issues. After iterating the game design according to the insights from heuristic analysis, I conducted a 2x2 between-subject study to compare the game's efficacy with an existing smartphone security awareness intervention. It was evident that the game performed better in improving users' awareness about smartphone security compared to the intervention. I also logged in-game play data to analyze level difficulty and answering patterns. Finally, I tailored the game according to a behaviour theory and conducted a 2x2 between-subject study to compare tailored versions of the game as part of my Master's thesis. I have published and presented my works at international conferences - CHI2021(Japan), Persuasive Conference 2021(UK) and 2022(Qatar).
Research (Case Study)
