Designing Educational Games for Financial Literacy and Bias Awareness: Reflections on Challenges and Opportunities

Finance is an important yet underexplored context in the development of prescriptive knowledge for education interventions addressing cognitive biases. Previous research indicates that games are a promising tool for cognitive bias mitigation, but our understanding of how to effectively design games to enhance bias awareness remains limited, particularly in financial education. This study explores challenges and opportunities therein based on seven focus groups conducted with upper secondary school students after playing a financial education game. A thematic analysis of the data indicates that students consider finance uncertain and complex, and wish for games to match this reality through simulations that are challenging and applicable to real-life contexts. Based on these, we propose four design principles to guide the design of effective financial education information systems and games—adopting a constructivist approach to bias education; supporting agency through scaffolding; contextualizing decision-making; and paying special attention to learners' attention and motivation limitations.