An assistive system to improve game usability for patients with cognitive disorders

Minh Khue Phan Tran (1) , Philippe Robert (2) , Francois Bremond (1)

1 STARS - Spatio-Temporal Activity Recognition Systems
2 CobTek - Cognition Behaviour Technology

With the ageing population, Alzheimer's disease and related pathologies are a major public health challenge. In parallel, new technologies of information and communication take an increasingly important role in our daily life and can be a support for both the evaluation and the direct support of users. Serious games 1 are computer applications, whose intention is to combine with consistency, both serious aspects (Serious) as teaching, learning, communication, rehabilitation, with playful aspects from the video game (game). Under the AZ@GAME project 2 winner AAP e-health #1 of Future Investments, games have been developed with the aim of stimulating cognitive and physical abilities of the patient. One of perceived problems concerns the engagement of patients to understand and to practice these games. Beside of lack of game culture and limited acceptance towards new technologies, memory and cognitive impairments provoke many difficulties of use and influence negatively on their game performance. Thus, engagement of patients decreases progressively and patients cannot benefit all the positives effects of games.

Mots clés: older adults; game usability; dementia; engagement

Domaines: Vision par ordinateur et reconnaissance de formes [cs.CV]; Interface homme-machine [cs.HC]

Minh Khue Phan Tran, Philippe Robert, Francois Bremond. An assistive system to improve game usability for patients with cognitive disorders. Gerontechnology, 2016, ⟨10.1007/978-3-319-40216-1_30⟩. ⟨hal-01412170⟩