Promoting the Mediterranean Diet: A Co-design Game Approach

Abstract

In the past few years, a plethora of serious games concerning eating habits have been developed aiming to help improve people’s diet and prevent chronic diseases. However, little emphasis has been placed on the Mediterranean diet and the Mediterranean way of life. In this paper we propose a novel educational game that promotes the Mediterranean diet among school students in Mediterranean countries. The work was conducted within the PRIMA SWITCHtoHEALTHY project [1], with a focus on food groups, healthy ingredients, water intake, not skipping meals, and physical activity. The game design followed a co-design approach which is based on the educational game design principles [2]. A related questionnaire regarding game factors was adopted and adjusted to the requirements of the proposed game. Each factor consists of up to three questions, certain questions were updated and a new factor that reflects “Transfer to real life” was introduced. The purpose of this process is to gather end-user feedback, with the goal of optimizing and validating the game design. To avoid bias, respondents were diverse in terms of age, nationality, and status. Children, parents, researchers, and nutritionists from Turkey, Spain, Lebanon, Morocco, and Greece participated in the survey. The higher the score, the more satisfied the user is with each question; nevertheless, low scores can occasionally be justified. The game was revised in consideration to the responses, resulting in a co-designed game.