User Experience and Acceptability of a Digital Educational Game for Self-Management Health Education Among People Living with HIV

The self-management of people living with HIV plays a pivotal role in enhancing their health quality of life. However, the self-management practices within this population are suboptimal. Therefore, it is imperative to reinforce HIV self-management education interventions to improve self-management ability among people living with HIV. The advent of digital educational games presents an unparalleled opportunity for innovative educational methods. This study aimed to evaluate the user experience and acceptability of a digital educational game as a novel health education intervention to support self-management for people living with HIV. A mixed-method study with explanatory sequential design was conducted to evaluate the user experience and acceptability of a digital educational game for self-management health education among people living with HIV. Fifty people living with HIV participated in this study and completed a questionnaire to investigate their user experience after playing the game. Nine participants were interviewed face-to-face to evaluate the acceptability of the game. Categorical data are presented as percentages. Qualitative data were analyzed via thematic analysis. The overall user evaluation of the "Cute Pet Butler" by the 50 participants (28 males and 22females with an average age of 33.64 years) was excellent or good at 90.91%, medium at 8.64%, and poor at 0.45%. The interviewees included 5 males and 4 females, with ages ranging from 23--51 years. After analyzing the interview data, the acceptability evaluation of the "Cute Pet Butler" with five themes were extracted, that are: perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, positive user attitudes, the intention of game playing, and modification suggestions. Cute Pet Butler had a good user experience and acceptance among people living with HIV. These results support further evaluation of its effectiveness as a new method to improve self-management health education interventions for people living with HIV.