Increasing Awareness of Alzheimer’s Disease through a Mobile Game (Beverley Cook and Philip Twidle)

Increasing Awareness of Alzheimer’s Disease

through a Mobile Gameitle page Bev Cook

Phil Twidle

• Background

• Development

• Evaluation

• Next steps

2

Overview

• Work undertaken as Final Year Project for BSc (Hons) Computing

• Aimed to increase awareness of the symptoms of dementia via a interactive story

• Using iterative, user-centric development techniques

3

Background

• Stage 1 – initial ideas based on research into existing games

• Paper prototype

4

Development

• Stage 1 – key messages

• Add ability to share on social media

• Make selections buttons rather than text

• Chapter summaries needed to link the chapters together

5

Development

• Stage 2 – develop chapter one for a real device

• test app design, layout and navigation

• Key messages: make buttons look better, have bespoke images

6

Development

• Stage 3 – add further chapters, saving and sharing

• With more text, issues with formatting and inconsistent wording were identified.

• Notifications needed when saving and restoring data

7

Development

• Stage 4 – compatibility on different devices

• Highlighted where size was a issue

8

Development

• Stage 5 – full story implemented

• [Video of app]

9

Development

• Testing used pre- and post- questionnaires to assess the change in knowledge after use of the game.

• Most users reported they had learned or been reminded of something by using the game.

10

Evaluation

11

Evaluation

Validate story with experts

Improve game aspects

Release and evaluate effectiveness

12

Next steps

Thank you

Any questions?