Measuring User Experience in Tablet Based Educational Game

In this paper we summarize first findings from eedu Elements user experience studies. eedu Elements is a game that brings the whole Finnish maths curriculum (primary school) available for players all over the world and it is optimized for tablets and smart phones. The game is based on teachable agent approach, which means that in the game students can teach skills to their game characters. Research focused on evaluating the implementation of the game and exploring player's attitudes about the game. The participants were Finnish (N = 43) and Ireland (N = 22) primary school students. Group interviews, eye-tracking and observation methods were used to evaluate the eedu Elements game. In general, the game was experienced as good or excellent learning game in all the studied age groups. The results showed that it took less than two minutes to learn how to play the game, but still the players were expecting to learn the gameplay even faster. It seems that users demands are nowadays so high that learning curve should be very steep. Thus the easy of use can be regarded as one of the crucial aspects influencing on diffusion of new game based solutions. Furthermore, the eye-tracking results indicated that players' perception patterns varied a lot and some players even missed relevant information during playing. The results showed that eye-tracking can provide important information from the quality of the game design and this information can be used to improve game's user interface and gameplay. However, we have to be careful when interpreting the eye movement data, because we cannot be sure if the player understands everything that he or she is paying attention to. Thus, eye-tracking should be complemented with offline methods such like retrospective interviews.