Costas Boletsis

Dementia Games: A Literature Review of Dementia-Related Serious Games

Serious games find wide application in the health domain, occupying their own place in the video game industry (games for health). Currently, there is a proliferation of cognitive training, exercise and social games, targeting one of the most dangerous disease of the era: dementia, as well as its various symptoms and stages like Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). However, the dementia-related gaming field is still uncharted. In this literature review, we list studies on serious games related to dementia, that are supported by evaluation tests on dementia, MCI and AD patients with published, peer-reviewed results. This review discusses the effects that games, which include Wii Fit, Wii Sports, Big Brain Academy, Lumosity, SmartBrain Games, MasterQuiz, MINDs et al., have on dementia-related conditions. The review leads us to the conclusions that, firstly, even though many games were developed for entertainment purposes, they are being used for health reasons (usually after technical or conceptual modification), acquiring the characteristics of serious games and, secondly, dementia games do have an effect on cognitive impaired people. If that effect is longlasting and/or transferable to the daily activities is a matter of further scientific investigation.

Tourists responses to mobile augmented reality travel guides

This research presents a mobile augmented reality (MAR) travel guide, named CorfuAR, which supports personalized recommendations. We report the development process and devise a theoretical model that explores the adoption of MAR applications through their emotional impact. A field study on Corfu visitors ( n = 105 ) shows that the functional properties of CorfuAR evoke feelings of pleasure and arousal, which, in turn, influence the behavioral intention of using it. This is the first study that empirically validates the relation between functional system properties, user emotions, and adoption behavior. The paper discusses also the theoretical and managerial implications of our study.

Demystifying the design of mobile augmented reality applications

This research proposes a set of interaction design principles for the development of mobile augmented reality (MAR) applications. The design recommendations adopt a user-centered perspective and, thus, they focus on the necessary actions to ensure high-quality MAR user experiences. To formulate our propositions we relied on theoretical grounding and an evaluation of eight MAR applications that provide published records of their design properties. The design principles have then been applied to guide the development of a MAR travel application. We performed a field study with 33 tourists in order to elicit whether our design choices effectively lead to enhanced satisfaction and overall user experience. Results suggest that the proposed principles contribute to ensuring high usability and performance of the MAR application as well as evoking positive feelings during user and system interactions. Our prescriptions may be employed either as a guide during the initial stages of the design process (ex-ante usage) or as a benchmark to assess the performance (ex-post usage) of MAR applications.

The Use of Smartwatches for Health Monitoring in Home-Based Dementia Care

A large number of dementia patients receive home-based care, in order to maintain their independence and improve quality of life and health status. The current formal home-based care model presents certain limitations related to the monitoring of the patients and the reporting of the progression of physical and cognitive decline. In recent years, novel care models and assistive technologies have been proposed in order to improve the quality of care and assistance services. In this paper, we test the assumption that the use of smartwatches for monitoring physical health aspects of dementia patients can benefit formal home-based care, by providing formal caregivers with additional, important information about significant, health-related events that may have happened during the non-visit home care hours. We perform a qualitative feasibility study - consisted of a small-scale usability study with one dementia patient, and an expert (physician) review - in order to test and evaluate the efficacy of a smartwatch intervention in home-based dementia care, as well as to examine its potential for a subsequent, larger-scale study. The smartwatch documented participant’s health-related issues regarding night sleep disturbances, potentially frequent toilet visits, daytime snoozing, low sleep quality and early waking up times. Those issues were verified by the project’s physician and, subsequently, measures can be taken to ensure the patient’s good health, safety, and quality of life.

A Taxonomy of Serious Games for Dementia

Serious games for dementia (SG4D) hold their own, unique and significant space within the Games for Health domain. However, the SG4D field still has not been fully mapped out and classified. In this work, we present a generic taxonomy of serious games for dementia, based on the health functions and the health purposes they serve. Firstly, we classify dementia games based on the health function they serve, in: cognitive, physical and social-emotional games. Each of these functions serves a variety of health purposes, leading us to a second, lower level of classification in: preventative, rehabilitative, assessing and educative games. Furthermore, we provide an ex-post evaluation of the proposed taxonomy by exploring whether the existing serious games for dementia can be validly classified, based on the proposed taxonomic characters. To this end, we collect and analyse a set of dementia-related serious games (e.g. WiiSports, Big Brain Academy, Cognifit, MinWii, et al.) by performing a literature review. The results show that the taxonomical system covers a sub-field of “games for health” and indicates areas which are under-explored by current games.

The Table Mystery: An Augmented Reality Collaborative Game for Chemistry Education

Educational games constitute a major field inside the serious games ecosystem, attempting to educate the players, while entertaining them. Augmented Reality (AR) has found application in educational games, introducing properties that improve gameplay and that potentially produce unique educational affordances. In this study, we present the “Table Mystery” game, an under-development mystery-adventure game utilising Augmented Reality to provide an exciting and engaging educational experience related to chemistry and, more specifically, to the elements of the periodic table. The game is developed for the Science Centre in Oppland county, Norway (Vitensenteret Innlandet). The long-term study’s purpose is to examine the effect of Augmented Reality on providing engaging and exciting, short-term educational experiences.

Comparative Analysis of Content-Based and Context-Based Similarity on Musical Data

Similarity measurement between two musical pieces is a hard problem. Humans perceive such similarity by employing a large amount of contextually semantic information. Commonly used content-based me-thodologies rely on information that includes little or no semantic information, and thus are reaching a performance “upper bound”. Recent research pertaining to contextual information assigned as free-form text (tags) in social networking services has indicated tags to be highly effective in improving the accuracy of music similarity. In this paper, we perform a large scale (20k real music data) similarity measurement using mainstream content and context methodologies. In addition, we test the accuracy of the examined methodologies against not only objective metadata but real-life user listening data as well. Experimental results illustrate the conditionally substantial gains of the context-based methodologies and a not so close match these methods with the real user listening data similarity.

Evaluating a Gaming System for Cognitive Screening and Sleep Duration Assessment of Elderly Players: A Pilot Study

Using serious games for cognitive screening can provide a motivating and entertaining alternative to traditional cognitive screening methods. Cognitive decline is usually measured by tests of mental processing, however age-related changes in sleep may also reveal signs of cognitive decline among older individuals. The current work presents and evaluates a gaming system for cognitive screening and sleep duration assessment of the elderly. The gaming system consists of an original serious game for cognitive screening (Smartkuber) and a smartwatch (Basis Peak). A pilot study is conducted to identify and improve the weaknesses of the gaming system and to evaluate the gaming system as to its usability and the game experience it offers for elderly players, assesing its suitability for a large-scale study. The pilot study lasted for 6 weeks and 101 gaming sessions were recorded from 5 elderly players. Elderly players were entertained by the game, while they were impressed by the smartwatch’s performance. Limitations of the study and future directions are discussed.

Audio augmented reality in public transport for exploring tourist sites.

Audio augmented reality (AR) has a long research tradition in the tourism industry. Audio AR tour guides for urban environments provide location-based, auditory information about nearby sights, minimising distractions from interacting with mobile devices and enabling users to focus on their new surroundings. In this work, we present the design, development, and usability evaluation of AudioTransit, an audio AR tour guide using the public transport network for exploring urban tourist sites with which we investigate the design and implementation of audio AR systems in tourism. Overall, the study indicates very good usability and an altogether positive acceptance of the concept of audio AR in public transport for tourism purposes.

Virtual Bodystorming: Utilizing Virtual Reality for Prototyping in Service Design

The paper describes our ongoing work on a new prototyping method for service design, Virtual Bodystorming. Virtual Bodystorming utilizes Virtual Reality (VR) and enables the user to role-play the service scenario in a fully immersive and collaborative VR environment. In this environment, various service-related areas and objects can be recreated with 3D graphics, while distant service users, providers, designers, and facilitators can communicate and collaborate. Virtual Bodystorming aims to minimize the gap between the actual service environment and its prototype by contributing to the development of fully immersive and highly-engaging service simulations. To illustrate the practical implementation of Virtual Bodystorming, we describe its main characteristics and present a first prototype version of the method. The method was evaluated by three experienced service designers, who highlighted the strengths of Virtual Bodystorming for service prototyping, regarding immersion and engagement, while emphasizing the service designer’s significant role in directing the user interactions of the VR scene. The method was considered to be suitable for prototyping services that include human interaction and/or spatial aspects.