An Immersive Augmented Reality Serious Game for Preventive Health Education

Abstract

Respiratory infectious diseases remain a major public health challenge due to the persistence of inadequate preventive behaviors and limited awareness of invisible contagion mechanisms. Although augmented reality (AR) has been increasingly adopted in educational applications, there is still a need for structured and user-centered approaches that integrate immersive interaction, pedagogical objectives, and usability-oriented development for preventive health education. This study presents the design and development of an AR serious game, “Covidcito Malhechor”, aimed at supporting preventive health education through immersive learning experiences. The proposed contribution combines the iPlus methodology with the Scrum agile framework to provide a structured and replicable process for developing AR-based serious games. The system enables users to visualize virtual representations of viruses and contamination processes within real-world environments while interacting with gamified preventive health scenarios. The solution integrates pedagogical objectives, gamification elements, and AR-based interaction mechanics within a human-centered design approach focused on usability and accessibility. The system was evaluated through performance testing, functional validation, and usability assessment involving 40 students. Results demonstrated stable execution on ARCore-compatible mobile devices, achieving a successful completion of all functional test cases after iterative refinement. The usability evaluation using the Serious Games Usability Evaluation Instrument (SGUEI) yielded an overall score of 83.14%, indicating a high level of perceived usability and interaction quality. These findings demonstrate the technical feasibility and usability of the proposed approach and support its potential as a foundation for future studies on AR-based preventive health education.