A serious game for raising air pollution perception in children

Concerns about air pollution have increased recently. Currently, 94% of the world population face air pollution levels considered unsafe by the World Health Organization, which tells us that efforts are needed to raise people’s awareness about air pollution. The use of serious games and gamification of interactive applications have raised people’s perception. This work presents Problems in the Air, a game developed in Unity about air pollution, in which the player’s goal is to control a character that inhabits an imaginary city tasked to monitor indoor and outdoor air pollution with sensors deployed across several city zones. While playing, children are expected to learn the possible causes of pollution in each zone and, this way, the game attempts to promote pro-environmental behaviors. This game allows educators to configure the problems that the player has to solve. Customisation is a desired feature in existing serious games as teachers often need to tailor this type of tools to their students. Pre- and post-surveys about air pollution were elaborated to evaluate air pollution perception of twenty students of an elementary school before and after playing the game, with results showing some significant positive effects. A System Usability Scale questionnaire was also performed and we obtained an acceptable mean value of 75, out of 100.