Design and Evaluation of a 3d Construction Mobile Game for the Iphone/ipod Touch Platform

Abstract

The work presented in this paper describes the design and user evaluation of a 3D construction mobile game. The game, iCube, works on iPhone and iPod touch devices consisting of an application where the student performs a set of exercises about building models with unit-sized cubes in a 3D environment. There are two game modes: training and competition. The training exercises are designed so that the user can get used to the game environment. The competitions are sets of tasks, created by the teacher or administrator, which the user has to download, by logging in to the system with a username and password. Competition results are sent to the server with data on times and scores. In this work, a trial version was brought out and evaluated by twenty two testers. Users were asked to complete the training tasks available in the device as well as two competitions. About positive tool's aspects they pointed out that game is useful for improvement of spatial ability being a fun application. However about negative aspects of it, some difficulties arose with use of tactile screen as the fingerprints caused problems while interacting with the game's 3D environment. The results revealed that it's necessary having in mind this item in games' design where screen action is continuous.