Assessing the applicability of modular playability heuristics for evaluating health-enhancing games

An increasing amount of health-related games are available, in which health enhancement is included either by having health topics as educational content, making players move physically, or by combinations of these approaches in various degrees. Heuristic evaluation is widely used as a low-cost expert evaluation method in software and game development for assessing usability problems. The goal of our research was to assess how modular playability heuristics work in the evaluation of different types of health games. Based on a literature review we collected a six-module set of playability heuristics. Three different games with direct or indirect health enhancing effects were evaluated with the derived set of heuristics. The results suggest that playability heuristics are useful in evaluating various types of health-enhancing games, provided that the heuristic modules chosen for the evaluation are suitable for the game in question. Two new heuristic modules are suggested to be designed for better evaluation of typical characteristics of health games.