Evaluation of a Serious Game Promoting Nutrition and Food Literacy: Experiment Design and Preliminary Results

Abstract

In this paper, preliminary results of the evaluation of a serious game promoting nutrition literacy (NL) and food literacy (FL) are presented. The serious game's effectiveness was evaluated in terms of educational value and user experience through a two-part evaluation strategy. In the first part, a quasi-experimental study was designed to assess the serious game's educational value compared to an alternative intervention based on the study of text-based material. Appropriate questionnaires were delivered prior to, immediately after, and one week after the intervention. In the second part of the evaluation strategy, the user experience was measured by means of the Game Experience Questionnaire (GEQ). Nineteen and 29 participants enrolled in the first and second part of the evaluation, respectively. The results of the study showed that both serious game and control intervention enhance user's NL and FL skills (p-value = 0.002, 0.025 respectively). Comparison between the two groups did not yield significant results (p-value = 0.25). Increased levels of competence, immersion, flow and positive affect were declared in the GEQ demonstrating the attractiveness of the serious game. Moreover, the study revealed an important association between the level of game interaction, as measured by the number of mouse clicks per second, and the user experience. Intermediate levels of mouse interaction indicate lower user engagement.