Designing an Interactive Game for Preventing Online Abuse in Namibia
Josephina Mikka-Muntuumo, Anicia Nicola Peters · 2021
in the wake of digitalization, technology has changed the world, connecting people with information and services at the touch of a finger. Regular Internet access, smartphones, and other technological advances have made the world a global village by bringing people from various geographical locations together. Despite the positive changes, the pace and scale of this technological revolution have created space for nefarious actors. Namibia has been grappling with issues centring on cyber security education, policy, and lack of online safety awareness. In recent years, Namibians have experienced identity theft, data breaches, fake news, phishing, hacking, money laundering, and child abuse initiated on online platforms. As such, this study developed an interactive video game to teach online safety in Namibia to combat online child abuse. An online survey, game design challenge workshops, and focus groups were used to gather information. A total of 84 relevant stakeholders (students, parents, teachers, and game developers) participated in two game design challenge workshops and the alpha and beta testing sessions. These workshops followed a solid co-design practice. We designed and developed two Namibian-inspired game prototypes that were combined into one game, which was implemented and tested during this study. All the game prototypes followed an iterative process of information gathering and sharing stories of online inappropriate behaviours, drawing storyboards, designing wireframes, and testing with cognitive walkthroughs and a think-aloud protocol, alpha and beta testing. The final game is called Onlinicus- Share your Story versioned in 2D and 3D. This game took an approach of user instructiveness and interaction in form of story-telling. The use of predefined personas and utilising participants’ own stories contributed to the richness of the stories and games developed.