Desenvolvimento de um jogo sério com o uso do design participativo / Pedro Henrique Pereira

Abstract

The concept of serious games revolves around computer games that intend education and not only entertainment. These games have been explored in several areas, such as health, public security, and the military. Serious games allow the user to be more immersed in the experience, which results in better learning, especially when compared to other media such as books and movies. In the literature, it is possible to observe several examples of the benefits arising from user involvement in software design to improve human-computer interaction and user experience. This project aims to present an analysis of the process of developing a serious game that helps in the learning of grammatical rules for elementary students, using participatory design techniques and the case study methodology. To achieve the objective, a brainstorming process will be carried out with the target audience, in search of characteristics that would be relevant to have in a game on the subject. The first stage of the project consists of the development of the game's prototype, making use of the characteristics and suggestions obtained in the brainstorming process and in the bibliographic research. At this stage, the usability and User eXperience (UX) test will also take place, in order to observe deficiencies in human-computer interaction (interface, interaction, usability, and positive hedonic feelings) and obtain more suggestions for improvements. In the second stage, the new version of the game will be presented, and a new evaluation will be carried out, which will aim to analyze, again, the usability and compare the results with the previous version. As a result, it is expected to obtain the positive and negative sides of the use of participatory design in the process of developing a serious game, in addition to raising the main lessons learned about this process. In the last step, we intend to identify the involvement and engagement in the use of the game as a pedagogical practice, through workshops and pre-test and post test evaluations, as well as UX evaluations to measure the hedonic feelings aroused by the use of a computational artifact in which the students helped in the making. As a legacy of this project, it is expected to have new contributions with the use of participatory design for the development of serious games, in addition to providing a computational artifact that can help in the learning of grammatical rules, linked to a new pedagogical practice for learning Portuguese in elementary school