Stevens Institute of TechnologySchool of Systems and Enterprises

SYSTEMS ENGINEERING RESOURCES


GAME DESIGN RESOURCES


Chronicle of Higher Education, 1/27/10, "Five Things Professors Can Learn from Video Games"

GUIDANCE


The following are some things that might be helpful to keep in mind as you design your Experience Accelerator:


  • The real needs are often:
    • hidden behind perceived needs or expressions of needs in the form of (inadequate) solutions…
    • or a smokescreen of conflicting and inconsistent "requirements"…
    • and might evolve while the solution is being developed.
  • Many stakeholders have to be satisfied before the solution can even be made available to the stakeholder(s) with the "real" needs.
  • Most system level problems are either due to issues at the interfaces, interactions between system elements, or a poor understanding of the real needs.
  • (Early) conceptual and architectural choices for a solution will impact our ability/flexibility:
    • to address the real needs as they, as well as our understanding of them, evolve while the solution is being developed
    • to support the solution over time
    • evolve the solution to address emerging future needs
    • to effectively and efficiently create system variants to address  related needs.
  • Trade-offs can have many dimensions - such as technical, economic, organizational, cultural, or socio-political.
  • All solutions will most likely have unintended consequences on its environment once deployed.
  • Integrating the different constituent components/elements of a solution will in most cases lead to surprising emergent behavior. This can be reduced by up-front considerations to understand the intended and unintended interactions between the components.
  • The deployment of the solution and exposure to the actual end-users can often lead to the realization that it "missed the mark", or at least missed significant aspects of the real need and what the critical attributes of an acceptable solution would look like.