E-Guess: Usability Evaluation for Educational Games

Abstract

Usability is a relevant aspect in the analysis of the human-machine interface, as it concerns the dialogue established between subjects, artefacts and quality of use, and interaction allowed by the system. This work presents a specific heuristic for evaluating educational games, created from Game User Experience Satisfaction (GUESS) and, concomitantly, Nielsen’s assessment tools. To this purpose, applied research using a quantitative-qualitative approach - with the participation of 3 specialized users and 4 potential users in an educational game used as a case study. The choice of GUESS as a starting point was due to a systematic review of the usability literature. Based on the model, users were invited to operate the educational game and present their impressions. From the selected results, a new use assessment tool, called E-GUESS, was formulated. With Educational-GUESS, we introduced changes aimed at pedagogical issues and educational content that also seeks to elucidate important points in the development of an educational game by allowing insights that are easily ignored during the design phase to overcome the alleged bipolarity between “fun” and “educational” in educational software games. Another contribution of the research was the usability analysis performed for the educational game used in data collection. This game, which deals with the theme Periodic Table of Chemistry and is in the validation phase, received valuable contributions for adjustments in its gameplay.