Game design recommendations focusing on children with developmental dyscalculia

Abstract

Children with Developmental Dyscalculia’s difficulties include those which affect the normal acquisition of arithmetic abilities. In order to improve their mathematic skills, these children are motived by the use of based-game interventions during neuropsychological rehabilitations. These games seek arithmetic training but present several game design constraints, which limit the real possibilities of use specially regarding motivational aspects. This paper presents a combination of studies on neuropsychology and game design to enhance user’s motivation. In order to achieve such purpose, it comprises four steps: literature review, case study, data triangulation, and experts’ evaluation. As a result, we offer a set of game design recommendations focused on user’s motivation. This paper is a result of the first author’s dissertation for the postgraduate program in Design.