Teaching gratitude through digital play: Insights from prototyping and usability testing with Colombian children

The character strength of gratitude has many positive effects and is increasingly promoted in educational interventions. Delivering gratitude interventions through digital technology can increase scalability and enhance children’s motivation to understand and express gratitude. Additionally, co-design with children from the target population has the potential to create more usable and educationally effective solutions that fit better with children’s everyday experiences. We conducted 2 studies, one based on 3 prototyping sessions with 10 children and the other based on 3 usability sessions with a separate sample of 8 children, in the design of a mobile game to teach Colombian preadolescent children about gratitude, based on an existing non-digital intervention. Study 1 focused on the development of design principles to guide the subsequent development of the app, while Study 2 aimed to show that the game could be both fun and educational. Children found the game usable and fun, according to both the System Usability Scale and qualitative interview and focus group questions. They saw potential for learning about gratitude, but also suggested changes that were incorporated into the final design, including simplifying the conceptual language used and introducing new visual design and interaction elements. We also incorporated a real-world activity outside the game to reinforce children’s learning of diverse gratitude expressions. The design principles we developed were shown to be relevant to children’s experiences across both studies. The benefits of transdisciplinary, child-centered work to integrate economically deprived children’s feedback in designing culturally relevant character education tools are discussed.