This work aims to raise awareness of environmental problems through interactive means, which, today, are much more appealing than the traditional ones to the academic community. To better inform community members of the importance of the 3Rs – Reduce, Reuse and Recycle, it was decided to develop an interactive 3D game, accessible through the Word Wide Web. This game includes 3 different activities which can be played in any order: solid waste recycling, saving water, and saving electricity. A small group of people evaluated the games; all participants were familiar with video games. It should be noted that the tests carried out focused only on the usability and interactivity of the game – the impact of the game at the 3Rs level – Reduce, Reuse and Recycle – has not been tested yet. The game makes the user more aware of the physical space where he moves (the school), showing his progress in real time. At the end of the game, the user is presented with the total time he took to finish his tasks and the total score achieved. In this way, the game becomes more interesting to the user.
This paper describes the development study of a solution to promote the Eco-Schools program for a higher school (ESTIG). The solution should communicate the actions and results of the Eco-Schools program, raise awareness from school all members to environmental education and involve the school community to save resources and to make selective waste collection through their monitoring. This Web system is composed by a front-office and a back-office and was developed according to principles and techniques of the software engineering area. The front-office were validated through user tests with 23 participants. In general, for generic tasks participants found the system easy to use and it was efficient and effective. For a more complex tasks participants had more difficulties to use and the system didn’t present so efficient and effective. There is a space to improve this system in order to involve more school members to environmental protection and education extended to other schools.
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