A Dozen Design Questions You Need to Answer Before Designing Your Game or Simulation

By Kevin Eikenberry

These questions are meant to be a starting point. Some of these questions are obvious, perhaps others less so, but all are crucial to making your design process both easier and more effective! The clearer your answers to these questions, the easier it will be for you to design a powerful game or simulation.

What is the organizational goal? Why are you even embarking on this design? What are the performance gaps or issues that you want to simulate and improve? You need answers to these questions, from key decision makers and those impacted most in order to design the right things for the right reasons. You may gather this information quickly, through interviews or in a very formal needs assessment process. How you do it isn’t a part of this message. That you have this information is. Know the organizational goals and purpose.
What is the instructional goal? This goal (or goals) comes from the organizational goals of course. It is important to think of them as two questions though. First, it keeps our designs rooted in the real world. Second, it allows us to drill into the most important components of learning – be it attitudes, skills or knowledge.
What are the critical components? The answer to this question comes from your analysis and understanding of the workplace. If you are trying to simulate something to produce learning, you need to know which pieces of the task (or which tasks in the workflow) are the most important ones to simulate. Sometimes simulations become too big, unwieldy or heavy because people try to simulate everything. Stay focused and clear on the most critical pieces.
Who plays/who needs to play? With answers to the first three questions you can now think about this one. Who are the participants in the simulation/game going to be? Are they the right people? Are there others that need to experience to get to the organizational goal? If so, it is time to play consultant and try to make that happen.
What is my model? You need to decide what kind of game or simulation you want to build. Are you going to build something where people do something or build something? Are you going to build a board-type game? Are you going to have people manipulate things? Is your game going to focus more on thinking and discussion? Effective design doesn’t start with this question (though many people do). Effective design asks this question when it is almost obvious (with the information you have gained from questions 1-4).
How real does it need to be? Some simulations mirror real life very closely. Others, hardly at all (at least on the surface). This is an important question for you to consider in your design process.
How elaborate does it need to be? Your organizational culture and the expectations you set will play a role in your answer to this. Does your simulation or game need to have fancy components, glossy handouts, etc? Or can you work with more simplicity and elegance?
How much time is available? You can’t squeeze a 4 hour simulation into a 45 minute lunch time session. This is an important question! Again, you may need to put your consulting hat on and build a case for more time, or perhaps you just need to be creative and design your product into the time expectations.
How much money/resources do you have? Knowing what your budget is and what other resources you have available are important to your design as well.
How flexible does the simulation need to be? Are you designing something to put into one workshop situation or will you need to be able to scale this activity over different sizes of groups, different audiences, different lengths of time, etc.?
What about the experience? Early in the design process spend some time thinking about the participants and their experience. Make some notes of adjectives you would like them to use in describing the experience. This will help you design in the levels of competition, fun, laughter, reflection, (and a hundred more things) that you want.
How will you debrief? A good design includes a design for the debrief. The codification and application of the learning comes during the debrief, so you must design it carefully and completely. There are a variety of ways to do the debrief, and a number of questions you must plan. There are other resources to help you with this, beyond the scope of this article. If you need this assistance, get it – your learners will be the beneficiaries.