Challenges of Developing a Mobile Game for Children with Down Syndrome to Test Gestural Interface

Abstract

After a literature review published by Nascimento et. al. (2017), the research team noticed the lack of studies focused on game controllers’ accessibility during use by children with Down syndrome. In view of that, this research describes a mobile game development and its usability analyses, which were created to evaluate the accessibility of touchscreen gestural interfaces. The methodology was organized into three steps: bibliographic research and the definition of the project guidelines, the game development, and its evaluation. The guidelines used were based on a study made by Nascimento et. al. (2019) of the impairments that children can have, their game preferences found on Prena’s article (2014), games accessibility guidelines for people with intellectual deficiency from the Includification Book (2012), a manual of touchscreen gestural interfaces from Android and iOS and a game development framework from Schuytema (2008). Then, for the usability analyses, the team decided to first submit the game to a group of experts in order to make some improvements before submitting it to the audience. In this way, two evaluations were done, a heuristic test with usability specialists and a cognitive walkthrough with health professionals. The list of heuristics used on the tests was created by a mash up of the Breyer evaluation (2008) and the recommendations of the Able Games Association (2012) and the cognitive one followed the Preece, Sharp and Rogers (2007) recommendations. The results found reveal some challenges in the field and adjustments, mainly in the narrative, game goals and interface feedback, that should be addressed as soon as possible.

Accessibility of games and game-based applications: A systematic literature review and mapping of future directions

“…Developer students (Dudaković et al, 2018;Gerling et al, 2016b;Levy and Gandy, 2019;Salen Tekinbaş, 2017;Sancho Nascimento et al, 2020) 5 Psychologists (Bulgarelli et al, 2018;Buzzi et al, 2019;Compañ-Rosique et al, 2019;Mendoza-González et al, 2018;Vieira et al, 2018) 5…”

“…Government (Andrade et al, 2018;Araújo et al, 2017;Baalsrud Hauge et al, 2018;Beckett et al, 2016;Beeston et al, 2018;Bernardo et al, 2016;Brooks, 2017;Brusk and Engström, 2021;Buzzi et al, 2016Buzzi et al, , 2019Coelho et al, 2020;de Lima Salgado et al, 2016El Hammoumi et al, 2018; Escudeiro et al, n.d., 2017;Garcia and de Almeida Neris, 2020;Gonçalves et al, 2020;Henka et al, 2016;Huang and Westin, 2020;Jaramillo-Alcázar et al, 2020;Kane et al, 2018;Leite et al, 2019;Levy and Gandy, 2019;López et al, 2016;Mangiron, 2016;Napoli and Chiasson, 2018;Nesteriuk, 2018;Neto et al, 2019Neto et al, , 2020Othman et al, 2019Othman et al, , 2020Price and Sup, 2018;Rao and O'Modhrain, 2020;Regal et al, 2020;Rocha et al, 2019;Sancho Nascimento et al, 2020;Schneider et al, 2018;Teixeira Borges et al, 2018;Torres-Carazo et al, 2016;Tzallas et al, 2018;Valencia et al, 2019) Ackn...…”

Task Automation Intelligent Agents: A Review

“…The only study that uses existing heuristics, except Nielsen's, was conducted by Sancho Nascimento et al [59] to develop usability heuristics for mobile game applications for children with Down syndrome. This study used existing heuristics proposed by Breyer evaluation, Able Games Association, and Recommendations of Preece, Sharp, and Rogers to develop the game.…”

Evaluating performance on a bespoke maths game with children with Down syndrome

“…There is however a slowly growing body of data that indicates the importance of attending to a number of key features and adjusting the pedagogy to the characteristics of the group. Nascimento et al (2020) identifies the importance of creating a strong narrative together with a compelling goal. This can be a missing feature when online materials mimic those of traditional lessons, and in the case of children and young people with an ID it often results in the use of kindergarten materials.…”