Heuristic Evaluation of an African-centric Mobile Persuasive Game for Promoting Safety Measures Against COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic affected the whole world, including the African Population. As the lockdown rules against the spread of COVID-19 pandemic are being eased off and Africans have begun going about their normal daily activities, there is a need for interventions and measures to ensure that they continue to observe the safety guidelines to prevent a second wave of the pandemic. While several interventions are emerging, there is a limited number of games or gamified interventions aimed at raising awareness about these safety guidelines with a specific focus on Africans. Games and gamified applications are popular among Africans especially young people due to their entertainment value. Therefore, we present the design, implementation and heuristic evaluation of a mobile persuasive game, titled COVID Dodge, aimed at raising awareness on the importance of social distancing and other precautionary measures against the spread of the COVID-19. This persuasive game strategically employs popular persuasive features and strategies to increase the attention of Africans towards social distancing and other precautionary measures. The results of the heuristic evaluation (Heuristic Evaluation for Playability) revealed that the game possessed a high level of playability which implies that it would be engaging and enjoyed by users. The result of the persuasive strategy evaluation revealed that 13 out of the 15 strategies we implemented were strongly present in the game. Based on the evaluators' comments, we provided some design consideration and insights for developing persuasive games.