Development of a serious game to fight childhood obesity: "barty"

Abstract

Serious games are often used for the purpose of educating through fun. This serious game, designed for Android devices, includes three challenges that are presented randomly to the player. The main objective of game is to teach the player to classify food in terms of healthiness and to teach the proper food to eat over the different day meals. The evaluation of the challenges takes into account its time and the total number of movements for its accomplishment, influencing the appearance of the game mascot - Barty - that appears in one of four possible states: Unhealthy, Weak, Healthy and Vitality. The validation of the developed solution was made through a two-week test phase with an initial sample of 16 children, and the whole testing process was completed with a total of 13 children. The testing phase started with a food questionnaire answered by the children, and by the installation of the application in a mobile device defined by the caregivers, so that the serious game could be explored over two weeks. At the end of that period, the children were asked to respond to a new questionnaire, identical to the initial one, in order to assess whether their food knowledge had changed or not. In the end the caregiver answered a questionnaire of his own that was intended to evaluate, among other questions, his level of satisfaction with the application.