A Tripartite Framework for the Co-design of an Awareness-raising Serious Game Addressing Visual Impairment: A Systematic Literature Review

This systematic literature review, conducted under PRISMA guidelines, examines how serious games addressing visual impairment are technologically designed and co-designed. Drawing on 26 studies published between 2015 and 2025, it argues that co-design is a communicational necessity rather than an optional refinement: the experiential knowledge of visually impaired people is transformed as it circulates through the design process and cannot be faithfully formalized without their active participation. The paper positions this argument within Information and Communication Sciences, using concepts of mediation and the "dispositif" to frame the work.

The review finds technology to be highly heterogeneous, with more than half of the included studies failing to specify their engines or software. This suggests that in this domain the technology functions primarily as a social mediator, fostering bonds between players, rather than as an end in itself or a mere vehicle for content transmission. Design practices are unevenly adopted: eleven studies employ top-down approaches, six use user-centered design, and only eight adopt participatory co-design. This distribution motivates the authors' proposal of a co-design method that brings together visually impaired experts, technical experts, and researchers.

The paper also traces a conceptual shift from user-centred design, which is oriented toward evaluation, to co-design, which emphasizes participation, and further to meta-design, which emphasizes appropriation by users. The authors acknowledge limitations, including database and language bias in the sample and the untested status of the theoretical framework, which they present as a proposal for future validation. Supporting the analysis is a bibliographic base spanning serious game design, research on how blind and low-vision users play mobile games, and co-design definitions, with the WHO's 2023 report on blindness and visual impairment serving as the epidemiological reference.