Desenvolvimento e avaliação de um serious game de educação alimentar para escolares

Abstract

Current society has been preoccupied about childhood eating habits because of the rising prevalence of overweight / obesity in this stage of life. However, in so far as children increasingly take ownership of technologies, Serious Games in the perspective of Food and Nutrition Education can contribute to the improvement of this scenario. This study aimed to develop and to evaluate a Serious Game of Food and Nutrition Education for schoolchildren between 7 and 10 years in the city of Natal-RN. This is an action research of qualitative approach and developed by the technique of participatory design under the light of the perception of Merleau-Ponty, whose methodology involved three steps: I. Understanding of the participants about food and interests to the game, besides testing of a paper prototype; II. Construction of the game; III. Evaluation of satisfaction and perception of the game by schoolchildren. Results of step one showed that the students' understanding of healthy foods was influenced by parents, teachers, socioeconomic factors and the media. As for the electronic game, the interviewees proposed the inclusion of the themes of physical activity and hygiene habits. The prototype test pointed to the need for improving menus and characters, as well as adapting the game script. This was materialized by the creation of the Ran-gO® game under a structure of role-playing game in which the player assumes the role of a character. In step three, the user satisfaction test demonstrated children's satisfaction as to knowledge about feeding, motivation and user experience. The need for adjustments was identified in order to reduce information overload to increase confidence. The older the child the higher was the satisfaction. However, there were difficulties of those with seven years in relation to the ability / competence to play. The perception assessed by means of interviews in the last step was associated to the nutritional quality of the food and the amount consumed by the character in the game environment, and there was contextualization of the child to its real life. The perceptive experience was related to the past and the present of the child, which can lead to habit, in a relationship with the future. Ran-gO® shows itself as a Food Education tool fruitful as what concerns informing the child about food habits to make its choices consistent with its needs.