Mobile Serious Game Design for Training Ethical Decision Making Skills of Inexperienced Disaster Volunteers

Abstract

This paper presents the design and development of a mobile serious game (SG) named MAGNITUDE for training inexperienced disaster volunteers. First, we present interviews with disaster experts to clarify the issues in disaster work and to identify the required criteria for volunteer workers. Second, we explain the survey we did to investigate the subjects’ awareness of ethical issues in a disaster situation. The survey involved 64 subjects, classified into two group, i.e. experienced (Ex) and inexperienced (Ix) who were in high school or the early years of university. The results of the survey showed that the Ix group had less awareness of ethical issues than the Ex group. Based on this finding we have been developing MAGNITUDE to harness its training potential. This SG is envisioned as encouraging Ix volunteers—who usually come in the early periods of disaster response work as spontaneous volunteers—to improve their soft-skill of making decisions ethically.