Between “that’s boring” and “one more time”: Preschoolers’ voices in the evaluation of a mobile story-listening game for children at cognitive risk for dyslexia
Background: Preschoolers are rarely shy about telling us what they think, and yet their voices are routinely absent from the design and evaluation of educational technologies created for them. This is especially true for serious games supporting young learners at risk for dyslexia, where adult-defined engagement metrics often drown out what children themselves have to say.
Aim: Drawing on the GameFlow model, this study positions preschoolers at cognitive risk for dyslexia as active evaluators of a mobile-based story-listening game, examining enjoyment and feasibility through both their words and their behaviour, and exploring how their critiques can shape inclusive educational technology design.
Method/approach: Ethical approval was granted by NTU’s IRB, with informed parental consent and child assent obtained. Fifty-three children aged 5–6 years participated in a 12-week preventive reading intervention, playing the game four days per week alongside either a phonics-based intervention or control games. A mixed-methods design captured quantitative measures (question response accuracy, training duration, story appreciation ratings, and GameFlow dimension scores) and qualitative insights from children’s spontaneous reactions, story appreciation responses, and observed engagement.
Results/findings: All 53 children completed the intervention. Question accuracy confirmed appropriate difficulty, and stronger initial story appreciation predicted shorter training durations, while accuracy was unrelated to training time. Children’s voices surfaced recurring themes around narrative immersion and character connection, while also flagging GameFlow dimensions, particularly challenge and player skills, that adults had overlooked.
Conclusion: When preschoolers are invited to speak back, they reveal what truly works for them and what doesn’t. This study demonstrates how children’s voices, including their critiques, can meaningfully shape inclusive educational technology design and strengthen early literacy supports for the children who need them most.
Implications for children and families: Your perspectives are invaluable. When you share what captivates you, what falls flat, and what you wish were different, you become genuine collaborators in shaping the digital tools designed to support early reading, ensuring that learning experiences reflect the children who actually use them.
Implications for practitioners: When you position children as evaluators rather than recipients of digital interventions, their critiques become design intelligence. Attending to what preschoolers endorse, resist, and request helps you select literacy tools that engage learners authentically, not merely those that appear so.
Funding: This research is funded by the NTU PPF 1/23 MC grant from Nanyang Technological University.
Keywords: children’s voices, GameFlow, mobile application, early literacy, inclusion
This presentation relates to the following United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: