Towards a serious games design framework for people with intellectual disability or autism spectrum disorder

Designing serious games (SGs) for people with intellectual disability (ID) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD), requires proper planning and decision making. In this article, a proposal of a serious games design framework (GDF) that aims to assist designers and special education teachers and professionals develop successful SGs for people with ID and people with ASD, is presented. In order to create this GDF, an extraction of SGs design guidelines from existing SGs for people with ID and ASD and a comparative analysis with common GDF that are used for designing SGs in general was conducted. The proposed design guidelines and the conclusions of the comparative analysis of existing general purpose GDFs were used as a tool to design a computer-based SG that aims to improve independent living skills of people with ID and people with ASD. Based on this previous work the proposed GDF that is analyzed in this article was devised. This work aims to fill the gap in the field of designing SGs for people with ID and ASD by providing a specialized and informed GDF.