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

This study examines how an educational escape game that embeds a real digital maintenance platform within a fictional machine-failure scenario can be designed for industrial learning. Its central purpose is to establish human-centred requirements for such games before further development, drawing on a multi-perspective process in which fifteen target-group professionals, eight UX experts, and nine simulation and game-based learning experts evaluated an early prototype across three workshops. The analysis was organized around five requirement categories: narrative and mission design, puzzle and task design, challenge, time and competition, feedback and progression, and media and interaction.

Participants received the concept positively, but the findings point to a persistent tension between operational authenticity and game mechanics. Time pressure, competitive elements, unlimited trial-and-error input, and an excessive number of media channels were identified as obstacles to learning, even though they serve to heighten engagement. The authors conclude that designers must deliberately decide which features of real work to reproduce faithfully and which to simplify or abstract in order to preserve educational value.

The contribution is both empirical and methodological. The workshop design and deductive analytic framework offer a reusable approach for requirements elicitation in serious games that integrate professional software tools. The theoretical grounding draws on research concerning Industry 4.0 competence change, debriefing in educational settings, systematic reviews of escape rooms in education, and digital transformation, situating the work at the intersection of vocational training and game-based learning. The study's scope is confined to an early prototype and to industrial maintenance training, so its conclusions are most directly applicable to similar professional simulation contexts rather than to education generally.