The Design and Development of the YOUTH@WORK game

Choosing a career is one of the most important decisions that a young person makes, and it is increasingly recognised that having a better understanding of careers and career management skills can help to improve the attainment of young people by reducing the risk of dropping out of school early and leading to more positive career outcomes. The Youth@Work game addresses this by supporting young people between the ages of 13-19 years in career planning. The main benefit of using a game-based approach in this area is that a game provides an active and engaging approach to supporting young people in making these complex and difficult decisions.
The current paper describes a case study of the design and development of a game, the Youth@work game, to support career planning, from the initial ideas to the working game and explains how theories of theories of career development and choice were used to specify learning outcomes in the game.
We will describe how the career competences required for the game were identified and operationalised and how these were implemented as learning outcomes in the game. The two main theoretical frameworks that were used to characterize the desired learning outcomes for the game were: (a) the Skills Development Scotland (SDS) model of career competences and (b) Holland’s model of vocational interests. The SDS model provided a useful organisational framework for the game and both models helped to specify the varied activities in the different zones of the game. The scoring system and feedback are described as well as difficulties that emerged in game design and development as these can provide valuable lessons about general issues that arise in designing games for learning.