Designing a serious game for climate change engagement and sustainable behaviour : a user-centred approach

Abstract

Climate change is a widespread socio-environmental challenge to the current world. Serious games have emerged as a potential medium for communicating climate change through an engaging and interactive educational approach to increase awareness of climate issues and foster sustainable behaviour and attitudes. This thesis explores the effectiveness of serious games in climate education and how a user-centred design (UCD) approach can be incorporated for the effective design of serious games through the design of the ‘EcoLand’ game prototype and evaluation. Integrating UCD principles, user experience theories, and gamification techniques with factual information can enhance user engagement and knowledge dissemination.

The research process combines a comprehensive literature review, evaluation of existing games, conceptual framework development, and game prototype creation. The prototype is tested with users, collecting their feedback through a structured survey to assess the user engagement, usability, and educational impact.

The thesis demonstrates how linking real-world impacts and simulating the effects of human actions and decisions with game mechanics can create an immersive and educational gaming experience. Experiential learning through engaging in serious games can increase communication about climate change issues among users. The study also discusses how users can be incorporated into the design process, iteratively refining the design utilising user feedback to increase engagement and effectiveness. This study contributes to the field of game design by offering a structured framework and recommendations for designing and developing engaging serious games for climate change communication. By incorporating interactive and experiential learning, serious games have the potential to increase climate awareness by making environmental challenges more relatable and actionable for a global audience. When a serious game is designed as an iterative process, considering the UCD approach, a more engaging and effective media tool can be delivered.