GSketch

GSketch is a system that will help novice programmers create games and simulations. GSketch is based on the idea of first sketching out the key elements of a game and then animating them. Next, a designer can add behaviors, as necessary, to make the game react in appropriate ways. We have conducted field studies with both game designers and novice programmers. With the former, we tried to understand their early stage processes and tools. To study the latter, we conducted workshops at elementary schools where children try to create new games. We used these field studies to create a library of 30 games and simulations that we then fed into our unique interface optimization technique (first developed for the k-sketch project) to obtain the minimum number of interface operations that GSketch must include to support a large percentage of this library. In this way, we can design a more simple interface while still allowing a broad range of games and simulations to be created with the tool.

The initial work on this project has been supported by a grant from the NSF's CreativeIT Program, Award #0742877.