Evaluating First Experiences with an Educational Computer Game: A multi-Method Approach

This paper presents our evaluation approach for a specific case study, namely the evaluation of an early prototype of an educational game with children aged between 12 and 14 years. The main goal of this initial evaluation study was to explore children’s first impressions and experiences of the game on the one hand and to assess the students’ ideas and wishes for the further development of the game on the other hand. The main challenge for the evaluation activities was the selection of the appropriate methodological approach, taking into account children as a special user group. We opted for a combination of different, mainly qualitative and explorative methods that were reported beneficial for work with children in the human-computer interaction (HCI) field. By presenting our multi-method approach, in particular the different steps and procedure within our study, other researchers can get inspirations for follow up activities when evaluating games with children as well as benefit from our experiences in exploring more collaborative methods and methodological combinations.