Empowering Creativity and Feedback: Lessons Learned from the Development of an App to Assist Game-Based Learning Activities

The chapter aims to underline the importance of considering ‘Empowerment of creativity and feedback’, one of the dimensions in Chou’s Octalysis framework, when developing digital learning game-based activities. A proposal of an app which aims at cataloguing and evaluating digital educational games is described, emphasising the design process used during its creation. The chapter is organised in four parts: the first underlies the theme and addresses the benefits of game-based learning in teaching and the obstacles encountered by teachers when selecting games for using during classes; the second seeks to give an overview of the Octalysis framework and highlights its dimension ‘Empowerment of creativity and feedback’; in the third part, the steps of the Communicative Design Paradigm are explored, which allowed, through a participatory design approach, the collection of the functional requirements for the proposed model; finally, it is clarified how ‘Empowerment of creativity and feedback’ was used to scaffold the proposal of an app for cataloguing and evaluating digital educational games, highlighting the role that such an app can have in surpassing teachers’ barriers when selecting educational games.