Simon McCallum

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.

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.

Biometric access control using Near Field Communication and smart phones

Near Field Communication or NFC is a short-range communication channel that is one of the most promising technologies around. One of the purposes for this technology is to simplify first-time connections to other wireless technologies, like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. In this article we will show how Near Field Communication in a Samsung Nexus S smartphone can be used as part of a two-factor access control system for unlocking a door. Biometric Fingerprint recognition is used for authentication and NFC will be used to transmit authentication information to computer controlling the door. We will define some requirements for the system to increase security and propose some solutions for implementation to improve protection of biometric assets.

Emotion Recognition for Mobile Devices with a Potential Use in Serious Games for Autism Spectrum Disorder

The continued improvement in the processing power of mobile devices, has enabled the deployment of complex processing and analysis in real time on personal devices. The prevalence of mobile devices, and the primary use as a gaming platform, provide an opportunity to create Serious Games based on complex image processing. This article focuses on the communication skills of children with autism, and develops a game using automated emotion recognition to assist in learning to interact in emotionally rich situations. This paper is an initial technology demonstration, which will lead, in future publications, to a full assessment of effect. The game uses automatic recognition of smiling to provide a scoring mechanism for player who collect facial expressions from people around them.

WebTics: A Web Based Telemetry and Metrics System for Small and Medium Games

In the 1980s game developers were able to pride themselves on developing every part of a game, sometimes even to the hardware being used. However, with the increasing size of game development teams, and the increasing demands on smaller game titles, the use of middleware and other third-party tools are becoming increasingly important to the industry. While there are still game developers who are reluctant to employ code not developed in-house, this position is getting harder to justify with the changes in the marketplace and development strategies. An example of this can be seen with the widespread use of game engines from third parties, e.g. the Unreal Engine and Unity 3D.

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.

Learner profiling for innovation education across disciplines: A work in progress paper

In this paper, we describe the efforts we are currently making to improve our innovation education exercise and competition called Idelab24. Over the past three years at Gjovik university college, we have run the Idelab24 which has involved more than 2000 of our 2nd year bachelor students. This work in progress paper discusses both the major practical and theoretical problems we have faced while running Idelab24 over the last three years. We also discuss our current work in progress to develop a web based open access multi-lingual media platform (English, Swedish, Norwegian and Arabic) called Hyper Interactive Presenter (HIP) to improve our innovation education. This platform is designed to use learner profiling to improve group formation of participants and to improve the customization of training and education of innovative skills and knowledge across disciplines and across cultures.

Gamers and learning

Games and simulations have been a part of military education for a long time. With the emergence of the computer gaming industry, with its continuous improvement in technology and fidelity, there is a potential for synergy. Simulations and games developed specifically for the military are generally costly as the full development cost must be covered. These are also expensive to update to match current technology.