Usability evaluation of a tangible user interface and serious game for identification of cognitive deficiencies in preschool children

Detecting deficits in reading and writing literacy skills has been of great interest in the scientific community to correlate executive functions with future academic skills. In the present study, a prototype of a serious multimedia runner-type game was developed, Play with SID, designed to detect deficiencies in cognitive abilities in preschool children (sustained attention, memory, working memory, visuospatial abilities, and reaction time), before learning to read and write. Usability tests are used in Human-Computer Interaction to determine the feasibility of a system; it is the proof of concepts before the development of real systems. The aim of this paper was to evaluate the usability of the interface of the serious game, as well as the tangible user interface, a teddy bear with motion sensors. A usability study using the Wizard of Oz technique was conducted with 18 neurotypical preschool participants, ages 4 to 6. Concepts related to interactivity (interaction, the fulfillment of the activity objective, reaction to stimuli, and game time without distraction) were observed, as well as eye-tracking to assess attention and the Usability Scale System (SUS) to measure usability. According to the usability evaluation (confidence interval between 74.74% and 90.47%), the prototype has good to excellent usability, with no statistically significant differences between the age groups. The observed concept with the highest score was the game time without distraction. This characteristic will allow evaluating sustained attention. Also, we found out that the tangible interface use leads to the observation of laterality development, which will be added to the design of the serious game. The use of observation-based usability assessment techniques is useful for obtaining information from the participants when their communication skills are developing, and the expression of their perception in detail is limited.