Developing 3D human-computer interfaces and serious games for health education in the Brazilian countryside using participatory design and popular education

The basic health care level in Brazil´s Unified Health System consists of a community-based attention model composed by small teams of health professionals dedicated to deal with low-complexity problems. Despite the social and economic advances experimented in the last two decades, social inequalities still persist in Brazilian countryside. However, smartphones and tablets are becoming more widespread among rural population. According to Popular Education, teaching-learning processes are specially put forward when educators assume the role of facilitators, taking into account the prior knowledge of learners, their cultural and historical background, and the real problems in which they are immersed. Popular Education claims that the interaction between educators and educands should be mediated by affection, a dimension that can be easily reached by using games. Herein this work we discuss the use of Popular Education to promote Participatory Design in order to build Ilera-Ayie, a 3D virtual world to support serious games for food and nutritional education and health promotion, and a puzzle-based minigame inserted in this virtual world, focused on the communitary health agents and the young population of rural settlements at Brazil´s northeastern countryside.