Integrating Real Work Systems into Educational Escape Games: A Human-Centred Requirements Analysis in the Context of Industrial Maintenance

Abstract

In recent years, novel approaches to learning and education within the context of digital transformation in industrial environments have gained increasing attention. These approaches aim to foster the development of new competencies that help address barriers in change management processes, such as resistance to change, uncertainty regarding new workflows, and limited digital competencies. Escape games represent a compelling approach in this context, as they allow participants to navigate (digital) environments in a self-directed manner, interpret information independently, and make decisions under structured constraints within a safe and motivating environment. Despite the increasing adoption of such games in (educational) practice, structured requirements analyses that inform the design of didactically effective escape games remain surprisingly limited. This holds particularly true in industrial learning contexts, where transferable design principles for integrating real work systems into serious games require further empirical grounding. This paper presents the results of a requirements analysis conducted as part of a joint project between a software company and a university. The project aims to support the human-centred development of an escape game in which players solve puzzles on a digital maintenance platform in order to resolve a fictional machine failure. As part of the human-centred development process, three workshops based on an early prototype of the escape game were conducted. To ensure multi-perspective evaluation, the workshops comprised 15 participants from mechanical engineering companies as the target group, eight UX experts to refine interactions with the platform, and nine experts in simulation-based learning to evaluate the didactic foundation. A particularly critical finding concerns the role of time pressure. Although temporal constraints constitute a core mechanic of escape games, they may undermine learning objectives by prioritizing task completion over reflection and system understanding. Furthermore, the results highlighted the importance of minimizing media discontinuities, addressing data protection constraints, developing a coherent narrative with clear objectives, and focusing interactions on essential system functionalities supported by transparent feedback.