When Intuitive Multi-touch Tablet Is Not Enough: Mobile Gaming for Extreme Usability

Simple finger-touch interactions of modern multi-touch smartphones and tablets contributed to considerably lowering the usability barrier of the traditional desktop PCs with keyboard and mouse which had caused so much anxiety, user frustration and "computer-phobia" for the past 20 years or so. A small kid quietly interacting with a smartphone in the subway train or an elderly person daily engaging in a video chat session with her remote family members at home is a common scenario today. While there is no doubt that the intuitive and easy-to-use multi-touch finger gestures we used today such as swiping (e.g. flipping through photos) and pinching (e.g. zooming-in/out in Google Maps) on smartphones and tablets have turned the use of computing and communication power much more inclusive, there are many aspects of this new modality that are still difficult to operate proficiently. Mobile gaming with the mainstream users today as healthy, active and tech-savvy citizens can, with a better understanding of the characteristics of the modality and integrating appropriate context to maximise the level of engagement, become more inclusive and extended to all categories of users. This talk will share an experience of designing an interactive tablet game tailored for the elderly people in Singapore with varying degrees of dementia. The game, built on the Android tablet platform, is a simple touch-enabled picture puzzle game but incorporates a few significant design strategies to more optimally engage its narrow and specific target users: (1) use of artworks, photos and pictures from 1930-60s to enhance the feeling of nostalgia and reminiscence; (2) visually-oriented user-interface not requiring any textual information, labels or instruction; (3) adaptive levels of difficulties to dynamically and sensitively set the pace of the game based on the user's interaction and progress in real-time. This marginalized category of users find it challenging to use even the simplest touch interactions we take for granted today. The development of the game involved more than 440 stakeholders including healthy seniors to try out and offer feedback, seniors diagnosed with dementia (target users), geriatric care clinicians, occupational therapists, doctors, psychiatrists, nurses and senior activity centre personnel, informing the design of the game in all levels of details and at all stages of the development. The deployment and final trial is currently under way.