An Experiential Approach to the Design and Evaluation of a Gamified Research Tool for Law in Children's Lives

ABSTRACT

The aim of the project Law in Children's Lives is to gamify the research activity of collecting data with a digital game to assess children's awareness of law in their everyday lives. Our main research goal is to address the theoretical and practical concerns in gamification through a user(child)-centred experiential approach. We grounded the design and evaluation of the game in the established User Experience (UX) theoretical frameworks -- Hassenzahl's hedonic-pragmatic model and McCarthy & Wright's four threads of experience. The game prototype consists of four microworlds with each comprising a set of scenarios where children are asked to select an action option and record their reasons by talking to the non-player character. The game was evaluated with 634 children aged 7-11 years. The levels of perceived fun, interestingness and ease of playing were generally high. The game could stimulate the children to think about the given scenarios and beyond them.

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Index Terms

• Human-centered computing