Exploring Usability and Educational Impact of Serious Games for Indonesian Sign Language System (SIBI)

The main form of communication for deaf people is sign language, which uses expressive hand gestures. Despite its importance, the use of sign language outside of the deaf community remains low. Digital tools for teaching sign language have been created in response to this, ranging from simple mobile or web apps to more engaging strategies like video games. The serious game described in this study uses the Indonesian sign language system to facilitate learning sign language. The objective is to promote accessibility and decrease miscommunication between hearing and hearing-impaired people. This paper explains the experiential learning game design framework used to develop the serious game in the fighting-typing genre. This paper evaluates the usability and knowledge acquisition of the developed serious game and compares it to learning video materials. Usability is measured through the system usability scale, and knowledge acquisition is measured through a learning evaluation test. In total, 48 computer science undergraduate students took part in evaluating both the serious game and video materials. In knowledge acquisition, where both methods achieved a median score of 92.31, the SG was found to be as effective as the video materials. In usability, the SG (M = 69.06) demonstrated a statistically significant higher usability score (p = 0.29) in comparison with video materials (M = 63.75). The findings suggest that the proposed serious game matches the educational outcomes of video materials and provides a more engaging and user-friendly experience.