Bit Byte World: A digital game to spread knowledge about female personalities in computing

• Ana Júlia L. Briceño UnB
• Ana Sofia S. Silvestre UnB
• Bianca P. Castro Pedro Mourão High School
• Hanani E. F. Soares UnB
• Tais A. Oliveira UnB
• Thamires P. Silva UnB
• Aleteia P. F. Araujo UnB http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4645-6700
• Carla D. Castanho UnB
• Carla Cavalcante Koike UnB https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3641-1819
• Maristela Holanda UnB https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0883-2579
• Roberta B. Oliveira UnB

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/wit.2021.15848

Abstract

There are great female personalities in the history of computing who have played an important role in the historical achievements of this area. However, their contributions are often poorly publicized and/or the credits of those contributions are denied to the true authors. Thus, this paper proposes a game called Mundo Bit Byte, created by a team of undergraduate and high school girls. The story is based on five prominent female personalities in the field of Computing. Each phase of the game is inspired by the life of one of these women, showing, in a playful and fun way, their achievements and other relevant aspects of their lives. A demo version of the game containing the first phase was evaluated by 234 people of different educational levels, genders and age groups. The results indicated that the experience of the first phase of the game contributed to the knowledge and aroused the interest of the players in knowing more about female personalities in the history of computing.

Keywords: Games, Women, Personalities, Computing

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