Visual Feedback for Players of Multi-Level Capture the Flag Games: Field Usability Study
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2019 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | 2019 IEEE Symposium on Visualization for Cyber Security (VizSec) |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Web | |
| Doi | http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/VizSec48167.2019.9161386 |
| Keywords | cybersecurity training; capture the flag games; visual feedback; trainees |
| Attached files | |
| Description | Capture the Flag games represent a popular method of cybersecurity training. Providing meaningful insight into the training progress is essential for increasing learning impact and supporting participants' motivation, especially in advanced hands-on courses. In this paper, we investigate how to provide valuable post-game feedback to players of serious cybersecurity games through interactive visualizations. In collaboration with domain experts, we formulated user requirements that cover three cognitive perspectives: gameplay overview, person-centric view, and comparative feedback. Based on these requirements, we designed two interactive visualizations that provide complementary views on game results. They combine a known clustering and time-based visual approaches to show game results in a way that is easy to decode for players. The purposefulness of our visual feedback was evaluated in a usability field study with attendees of the Summer School in Cyber Security. The evaluation confirmed the adequacy of the two visualizations for instant post-game feedback. Despite our initial expectations, there was no strong preference for neither of the visualizations in solving different tasks. |
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