Learning experience design (LXD) describes the art of creating experiences that help learners fulfilling the learning outcomes they desire. Thus, learning scenarios need to be created in a user-centered and goaldirected way, which in turn has a positive impact on the learner’s motivation. Also during the development process of a serious game the concept of LXD comes into play. This concept is strongly interlinked with design thinking which is a more general approach to generate creative and effective solutions to specific challenges. It
focuses on a specific “user” rather on the ”learner” but nevertheless both concepts share key principles: they are user-centered approaches and function in an iterative way. One method, stemming from the concept of design thinking, that is expected to be an efficient way for usercentered usability testing and gameplay development is paper prototyping. This paper describes how the
method of paper prototyping was used within the project “E.F.A.” which aims at the development of a serious game for workplace safety. Paper prototyping has been applied during an early stage of the development process in order to test the game mechanics and game elements of the serious game. The paper aims at
answering the following research question: To which extent is paper prototyping an appropriate method to test and refine the concept of a serious game in an early stage of development (before digital realization)? In order to gather data on those aspects the project team conducted seven test runs to test the paper-based version of the serious game. The participants which were experts in the field of media didactics were asked to think aloud while playing and were interviewed afterwards. After each test run the paper prototype was modified according to the feedback given by the players. The results indicate that paper prototyping is an appropriate method for testing game mechanics and to some extent the learning outcome in the development process of serious games. The paper poses recommendations on how to use paper prototyping in the context
of serious game development and captures the benefits and limits of low-fidelity paper prototypes.