1. Highlighting 6D Playbook
Define the Problem
Statistics reveal that 1 in 10 seniors over 60 suffer from dementia, with over 50% of those above 80 at risk. Moreover, 3/4 individuals with dementia experience rejection and loneliness, as per a national survey. The problem is the lack of the public’s understanding and empathy towards those with dementia. With the increase in dementia cases, the public’s view will only be shifting towards stigmatizing those with dementia, hence fostering an environment where individuals with dementia may face increased social isolation and exclusion. This lack of understanding will marginalize our vulnerable population, hence hindering efforts to create a more inclusive and supportive Singapore society.
Determine Goals
Our main target audience is people with early onsets of dementia, aged 40 to 65 years old. Our primary objectives focus on improving user well-being through increased outdoor activity and heightened mind stimulation. We aim for a 30% rise in outdoor engagement, assessed via baseline surveys and monthly comparisons. Additionally, we seek to elevate mind stimulation by 20% monthly, monitored through user interaction with interactive games. Secondary goals include fostering supportive mini-communities and providing a safe platform for users, with a focus on addressing signs of dementia.
Decide Target Behaviours and Emotions
The app offers diverse activities like strategic thinking, memory challenges, and photo capture, enhancing cognitive abilities and promoting an active lifestyle. Moreover, it fosters joy, relaxation, and excitement while boosting memory skills and providing insights into dementia for an enriching experience.
Describe and Profile Players
We hope our game will encourage users to bring out their inner explorers. By fostering the spirit of exploration, we strive to create a community where every player discovers the joy of venturing beyond their comfort zones, forging new paths and expanding their horizons in the vast realm of possibilities.
Design Gamification Strategy
We created an interactive game, Coffeemaster Quest that encompasses cognitive and physically stimulating activities. The game aims to reduce the risk of adults aged 40 to 65 years old of contracting early onsets of dementia while also raising awareness of the illness. Players will have to complete tasks and missions at varying coffeeshops in Singapore to collect as many badges as possible. Achievements and rewards will also be rewarded for their efforts and time invested in the game. We also created marketing collaterals to boost popularity and gain traction upon launch.
Diagnose and Analyse Content
Learning from our mentors, we intend to pivot our game solution from finding coffee drinks to sourcing ingredients for making a cup of coffee, adjusting our game components to the new ideal solution, and reiterating our ideation by letting users play. We also plan to adopt location-based functionality in the future, which Gametize will implement in near future, and we can help enhance the user experience of the game application at the moment.
2. Inspiration for this Project
Coffeemaster Quest helps to solve real-world challenges as the game provides high-value impact to adults aged 40 to 65 years old who are more prone to early onsets of dementia. Our game aims to address the needs of middle-aged adults prone to dementia in Singapore, where 1/10 seniors aged 60 and above have dementia. This highlights the importance of why we need to address dementia in Singapore and urgency to slow down the rate of people contracting dementia. If we do not put in efforts to reduce dementia (not cure), more people in Singapore will lose their ability to communicate, complete daily tasks or even regulate their own behaviors. This will cause many problems, like loss of employment opportunities, social isolation and inability to take care of themselves, eventually portraying a declining mental state of Singaporeans.
Through our research studies, we have identified various objectives to help increase their cognitive and physical abilities as well as promote more outdoor engagement. In doing so, it helps to slow down their rates of contracting dementia. We also intend to raise awareness of dementia, further highlighting its importance and sharing information with players on knowledge of this illness. As such, players can be more educated on dementia which can destigmatize false understanding and eradicate misconceptions people have about it.
With the use of a gamification strategy, players can be more engaged and participate in interacting activities to apply theory into real-world scenarios. Through the integration of rewards, challenges, and user-friendly interfaces, it can stimulate players’ cognitive functions and encourage active participation in various tasks. The incorporation of social interaction, like our community space feature, fosters meaningful connections and combats feelings of isolation, bolstering emotional well-being and overall quality of life.
We ultimately envision a game that can slow down onsets of dementia, while also spreading the world about dementia to spark more conversations and shed greater light into this marginalized group in our society, promoting greater inclusivity and welfare among Singaporeans.
3. Our Learnings
We learnt that having a concrete and substantial problem statement, backed with evidence is important and understood that we need to identify various pain points and symptoms with each type of dementia to better know how to come up with our gamification strategy.
We found out that it is not within our scope to cure dementia, but to focus on a specific aspect of the illness and create a solution that can help alleviate that identified area. As such, we initially aimed to target the elderly patients with dementia. However, upon consulting with our mentors, we learned that these patients might experience agitation when engaging with our game. Thereafter, we streamlined our focus towards preventing the onset of dementia in middle-aged individuals aged 40-65.
In summary, we learnt that it is essential to gather feedback and be reminded of the design thinking process as we make multiple reiterations of our ideas. Communicating with each other and being transparent with our perspectives also played a high functioning role in compromising our ideas. We are glad to have completed Coffeemaster Quest and look forward to piloting the game on Gametize.
1. Play the game first.
2. Use the Template game for your own initiatives.
Credits: [AY2023/24] G3 Team 2 – Christopher Loo Wei Jung, Chua Ying Xi, Jill, Errikk Kian Nicdao Mantaring, Kylie Teong Li Ying, Nicholas Leonardo Boentoro, Ooi Wen Xian, Thay Rui Ying