A specialized cognitive walkthrough to evaluate digital games for elderly users

Abstract

Population aging on a global scale has occurred simultaneously with rapid technological developments. In the context of using technologies to improve quality of life, digital games can offer several benefits for a healthy aging, such as physical and mental well-being, and socializing with other players. However, to achieve such benefits it is required that the interfaces of these games be accessible to the elderly public. In this way, it was noted the need for evaluation methods that consider the characteristics of elderly users while interacting with games. In Literature, there is a scarcity of methods that evaluate digital games, so, the objective of this work is to propose a specialization of the Cognitive Walkthrough (CW) method to evaluate digital games considering elderly users. Two case studies were also carried out, the first with the intention of verifying in practice how the CW method is applied. Based on the theoretical studies and the results of the first case study, a specialization of the CW method was proposed, called Cognitive Barriers Walkthrough (CBW). A second case study was carried out to verify its applicability and provide a comparison with the traditional method. The comparison results suggest the effectiveness of the proposed method over the traditional method.