Besma Ben Amara

Informations générales

Besma Ben Amara
Grade

Maître Assistant

Biographie courte

Besma Ben Amara is currently an assistant professor at FSEG Tunis, University Tunis El Manar, Tunisia. She has been a member of the SMART laboratory in Tunisia since 2019. She received her master’s degree in computer science, multimedia, and decision making in 2015 from the ISAMM, University of Manouba, Tunisia. She obtained her Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Tunis, ISG Tunis, in 2024. Her current research interests include software engineering and serious games design. Her research specifically focuses on how to develop serious games that engage and motivate players throughout various domains, including education, health care, and industry and for purposes, as learning, training, and health therapy.

Publications

  • 2024
    Besma Ben Amara, Hédia Sellemi, Lamjed Ben Said

    An approach for serious game design and development based on iterative evaluation

    Journal of Software: Evolution and Process, WILEY_ Volume36, Issue10 October 2024 e2680, 2024

    Résumé

    Serious games (SGs) are valuable tools for learning, training, and improving skills in
    various domains because they engage and motivate players to achieve planned processes to reach objectives. Several works provided methods, models, and frameworks
    to support SG development. However, designers, developers, teachers, and
    researchers face challenges in creating SG with entertainment and learning balance,
    and many designed games still do not fulfill the main intended objectives. This paper
    introduces an approach, called SGDA-IE with phases and steps to follow during the
    entire SG design process. It was built on literature review and SG design challenges
    designers need to consider from the early stages when creating SG. The proposed
    approach is founded on three perspectives: software engineering best practices,
    video game industry practices, and SG success factors and provides means to overcome the investigated design challenges. These are characteristics taxonomy model,
    requirements specification approach, and artifacts iterative evaluation by designer,
    domain expert, and players. To assess our approach efficacy, we conceived a health,
    safety, and environment (HSE) training SG for workers on fuel storage sites and
    petroleum installations. The feedback received is positive and indicates a favorable
    specification method of the SG, effective participatory design, and control over
    requirements evolution. The SG playtesting reveals a significant involvement of participants and efficient tracking of the knowledge acquisition.

  • Besma Ben Amara, Hédia Sellemi, Lamjed Ben Said

    An Approach for Serious Games Requirements Specification based on Design Challenges and Characteristics Taxonomy

    Multi-Conference OCTA'2023., 2023

    Résumé

    As in software development projects, the most critical activity in
    Serious Game (SG) design process is the requirements specification due to SG's
    multidisciplinary and characteristics complexity. In the literature, specific
    design methodologies with requirements specification strategies are still needed
    to achieve an engaged SG. This paper proposes an approach that assists
    designers and design stakeholders when specifying required SG features and
    their relationships. We shaped this approach into three stages with three
    abstraction levels based on both characteristics taxonomy model and the SG
    design challenges we propose in this work. We practiced the proposed process
    in specifying an SG for health safety environment training for workers in fuel
    storage sites. The feedback shows that such a strategy would be highly
    beneficial for the participatory design process since it reduces game features'
    complexity and thus their understanding by the design team members. It also
    promotes game design artifacts evaluation and allows effective processing of
    the game requirement changes.

  • Besma Ben Amara, Hédia Sellemi, Lamjed Ben Said

    The Principal Characteristics of a Serious Game to Ensure Its Effective Design

    Proceedings of DiGRA 2022 Conference: Bringing Worlds Together 2022, Published: 2022-01-01, 2022

    Résumé

    Serious games (SG) adoption increased in multiple fields. As a first step towards a global SG design approach, it is crucial to characterize the game intended. However, there is still a lack of what the principal and necessary characteristics are to specify SG. This paper explores SG Characteristics (SGCs) to bridge this gap by first analyzing features from SG studies in different domains (education, health, business) and purposes (SG classification, learning impacts, design, and evaluation), then identifying shared features. The findings showed 12 high-level abstraction classes of characteristics, which we named Common SGCs (CSGCs), reducing features overlapping and describing the general structure of the game. The CSGCs set serves as a foundation for SG design and reusability. It also provides the main criteria for SG classification and evaluation. Designers could implement CSGCs by matching each one of them with related concrete game mechanics plethora. We present future research directions in the scope of the SG design approach using the CSGCs proposal.