A Picture-based Serious Game to Train Non-medical People for Emergency Situations

As a non-medical professional, reacting to an emergency situation where life is at stake is not an easy task: knowing the minimum procedure to react to such a situation is a question that most people just cannot answer. This paper proposes a serious game using a simple picture-based navigation which provides a training tool for common people. This serious game wants above all that everyone can fully know the four priorities of action: (1) keep calm, (2) evaluate the situation, (3) identify the dangers, and (4), call for help. For practical purposes, the domain of early childhood has been selected to train educators for five typical major accidents they will probably encounter with children. Two of these accidents were fully developed, parameterized, and tested. This paper focuses are: first, on the medical and social needs, demonstrating how important first-witness reactions are in an emergency scene; second, on how different domain experts and professionals were brought together; third, on how the software was developed based on an educator-centered design. Result in terms of image-based interface and user tests show that a application without fantastic graphics and special effects can have a real impact: potentially, an impact on people's lives.