Android tablet game development for dementia patient - games

• Main Author: Loh, Yong Liang
• Other Authors: Chan Syin
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Computer science and engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/70534
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

With the rapid growth of aging population in Singapore, more elderly and mid-age adults are getting diagnosed with dementia. Singapore will be facing a rapidly aging population by 2030, where one in five people are aged 65 or older. The trend of aging population in Singapore will continually increase and this will significantly increase the numbers rate of elderly getting dementia. Dementia is unlike other illnesses; it is incurable and there is no exact treatment or remedy to recover. However, researchers are putting in lots of effort through research and experiments in making use of advance developed technology to help slow down or prevent the growth of dementia condition. One of the effective methods is to make use of advanced technology such as smartphones and tablets to create a platform of applications that can aid in stimulating the brain through using of brain-training applications such as puzzle-solving and memory games. People who have dementia can enjoy their time in playing these interactive application as well as maintaining or improving the condition of their dementia. The aim of this project is to create a mobile game application that can help stimulate a patient’s brain that will help slow down or reverse the rate of dementia. Besides, making the game application gameplay to be interactive like other games on the market, this project also includes feature to capture data of the user-behaviour during the gameplay as records. These records are then sent to the PEAR system for a doctor to make better analysis of the patient’s condition. In this project, the author has created a mobile game application and the name is called FruittyPutty. FruittyPutty is a game that focuses primarily on the memory, speed and mind-eye coordination. The objective of FruittyPutty is to collect the right types of fruits into a fruit basket to complete the stage. The player first must memorise the fruit type then recognizes the memorised fruit type when it is falling and then move the basket below the fruit to collect. As the player reached to hard stage, the player need to memorise the right types of fruits in sequence order and they will need to collect the fruit in sequence to successfully complete the stage. FruittyPutty also has the capability to capture many gameplay behaviours for data analysis. This includes time used, the number of incorrect fruits collected, number of missed correct fruits collected, number of incorrect fruit sequence collected, number of hints used and number of retries. This varieties of gameplay behaviour data record will be useful for the doctor to make better analysis of how the patients’ condition. FruittyPutty is a game which can accommodate to elderly patient that has different type of dementia condition to play, in terms of stages, this game has easy, normal and hard stage. The game is made specially to suit for the elderly to play in terms of using large font of words, vibrant colour interfaces and the speed of the game. With the creation of FruittyPutty mobile game application, the author hopes that the game is able to attract the dementia patients to play with that will help improve their dementia condition. As well as providing a good, fun and interactive platform for the caregivers to let the dementia patients to enjoy their stay in the day care centres.