EDTF: A User-Centered Approach to Digital Educational Games Design and Development

The creation of digital educational games often lacks strong user-centered design despite available frameworks, which tend to focus on technical and instructional aspects. This paper presents the Empathic Design Thinking Framework (EDTF), a structured methodology tailored to digital educational game creation. Rooted in human–computer interaction (HCI) principles, the EDTF integrates continuous co-design and iterative user research from ideation to deployment, involving both learners and instructors throughout all phases; it positions empathic design (ED) principles as an important component of HCI, focusing not only on identifying user needs but also on understanding users’ lived experiences, motivations, and frustrations. Developed through design science research, the EDTF offers step-by-step guidance, comprised of 10 steps, that reduces uncertainty for novice and experienced designers, developers, and HCI experts alike. The framework was validated in two robust phases. First, it was evaluated by 60 instructional game experts, including designers, developers, and HCI professionals, using an adapted questionnaire covering dimensions like clarity, problem-solving, consistency, and innovation, as well as standardized scales such as UMUX-Lite for perceived ease of use and usefulness and SUS for perceived usability. This was followed by in-depth interviews with 18 experts to understand the feasibility and conceptualization of EDTF applicability. The strong validation results highlight the framework’s potential to guide the design and development of educational games that take into account HCI principles and are usable, efficient, and impactful.