Improving Awareness and Empathy with Video Games: A Qualitative Analysis Study of PUDCAD Game

Abstract

This study aims to understand the efficacy of a CAD enhanced video game on improving the awareness and empathy of design students on the issues of people with disabilities. Previous literature shows video games may have an impact on improving awareness and empathy of players. “This War of Mine” is a well-known game which allows players to build empathy towards the civilians who were trying to survive in a war zone. In this study, it was hypothesized that, a video game can be used as an educational tool to raise awareness and empathy of design students on the problems of disabled people. This is a controlled presurvey-postsurvey, quasi-experimental qualitative research. Participants were divided into two groups as experiment and control. Experiment group played the PUDCAD game. Control group played another environmental puzzle game. Data collection instruments were three questionnaires consist of open-ended questions. The presurvey was focused on the participants’ emotions, thoughts, and previous experience about the disabled people. Postsurvey, which was applied right after the gameplay was focused on the issues of the usability of the game. Delayed postsurvey which was applied 7–10 after the game play focuses on possible changes in the emotions and thoughts of the participants about disabled people. Qualitative coding methods were used to analyze the responses. Findings show, based on the declarations of the participants, PUDCAD game has a larger impact on the improvement of awareness and empathy of the participants than the control game. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.