Stimulating children’s engagement with an educational serious videogame using Lean UX co-design

Abstract

The motivation to stimulate children’s learning engagement could be found in the fact that learning is not always motivational in itself. This is particularly true when learning is obligatory and based upon material that has not been chosen by the children themselves. A Lean UX approach to the co-design of an educational serious videogame (MOBI) is proposed in this paper. The core idea is that children's natural interest in playing can be stimulated by engendering the feeling that they are participating in the creation of something. The hypothesis is that this approach can increase the children's level of engagement and can facilitate their awareness of their learning perception. With the aim of testing this hypothesis, this paper describes an experience with 50 children with ages between 10 and 12 years old. The results indicate that the children’s satisfaction grew significantly during the process, with an important reduction in the requests for changes and that 60% had the perception of having learned. It can be concluded that the co-design based upon a Lean UX methodology, of a children’s educational serious videogame increases their level of product engagement and facilitates their awareness of their learning perception.