Designing user experiences for policymakers in serious games in the domain of global food security

Policymakers face complex tradeoffs in their efforts to achieve global food security. One way to better understand tradeoffs of alternative interventions may come from practicing in simulated environments in a participatory fashion. Serious games employing agent-based simulation have been designed to practice individual and group decision-making in complex domains such as healthcare and sustainability, but often lack clear representation of data and workflow to users. The work herein describes the design of the user experience (UX) and a series of user interfaces (UI) for a serious game to address issues surrounding global food security. Per the design of the user experience, participants work together to invest in a series of projects over the course of four rounds to improve the capacity for food and nutrition in their continental region. Distinct UIs were designed for program officers (environment, agriculture, and health) as well as regional directors. The design focused upon four specific considerations: indicators to tie individual projects to pertinent data, hierarchical and multi-level representation of data, adaptable means of communication for the different player roles, and appropriately detailed feedback. The design was preliminarily tested with heuristics experts and a cohort of students before the game was officially played in the field at eight global sites as the 2017 NASPAA-Batten Student Simulation Competition.