Smart Decisions: An Architectural Design Game

Architecture design is notoriously difficult to teach and to learn. Most competent architects in industry have deep knowledge won from long years of experience. But if we want architecture design to be methodical and repeatable, we need better methods for teaching it. Simply waiting for an aspiring architect to accumulate 10 or 20 years of experience is not acceptable if we believe that software engineering is a true engineering discipline. In this paper we describe our experiences with the development of a game that aids in teaching architecture design, specifically design employing the Attribute-Driven Design method. We discuss our approach to creating the game, and the “design concepts catalog” that provides the knowledge base for the game. Finally, we report on our experiences with deploying the game, and the (enthusiastic) assessments and feedback that we have received from industrial and academic participants.