A serious game for raising air pollution awareness in children

• Autor(a) principal: Relvas, Tiago Manuel Barreto
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/24170
• topic: Serious game; Perception; Criança -- Child; Jogo sério; Poluição atmosférica -- Atmospheric pollution; Perceção; Educação -- Education

Air pollution has been one of the most discussed topics in the world in the last years, due to its effects on the atmosphere of our planet and our health overall. Currently, over 2.6 billion people are exposed to indoor air pollution, which tells us that efforts are needed to raise people’s awareness about air pollution. The use of serious games and gamification of apps have raised people’s perception, but these effects end up being short-term. This work presents “Problemas no Ar”, a game developed in Unity about air pollution where the player’s goal is to control a character tasked to monitor indoor and outdoor air pollution with sensors in several city zones. While playing, children are expected to learn the possible causes of pollution in each zone and, this way, the game attempts to promote pro-environmental behaviours. This game allows educators to configure the problems that the player has to solve. Pre- and post-surveys about air pollution were elaborated to evaluate perception of twenty students of an elementary school before and after playing the game. Participants’ gameplay experience was also evaluated through a usability score. Results show that the game provided some significant positive effects on participants’ perception. In terms of usability scores, the mean value was 75 out of 100, a value that is acceptable.