Playing Hard-to-Forget:
Creativity in Game Design for
Person-Centred Dementia Care
Anja Sisarica, Neil Maiden, Julienne Meyer
ICLCity 2012, London
© MIRROR Project - Co-Funded by EU IST FP7 – www.mirror-project.eu
Creativity and play in problem solving
▪ Creative solutions are not accomplished by
intellect alone, but by the play instinct. – C. Jung,
Modern Man in Search of a Soul, 1933
▪ Let my playing be my learning, and my learning be
my playing. – J. Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 1938
© MIRROR Project - Co-Funded by EU IST FP7 – www.mirror-project.eu
Application in dementia care
▪ Even with impaired memory, every person is unique
– changing hearts and minds of carers results in
truly person-centred care
▪ Maintaining identity, sharing decision-making,
creating community, promoting positive culture
(source: My Home Life)
© MIRROR Project - Co-Funded by EU IST FP7 – www.mirror-project.eu
Serious
games
Creativity
City @
MIRROR
Me
Dementia care
Ima @
MIRROR
RNHA, MHL
© MIRROR Project - Co-Funded by EU IST FP7 – www.mirror-project.eu
Game contents
Game
environment
Game rules &
borders
Implicit
creativity
support
User behaviour,
User
experience,
User judgement,
Game feedback,
Learning,
Explicit
creativity
support
How do variations of creativity
support and game design influence
players’ learning and creative
problem solving outcomes?
© MIRROR Project - Co-Funded by EU IST FP7 – www.mirror-project.eu
Learning
outcomes
Creative
outcomes
Playing hard-to-forget
▪ Uncovering reasons that lie behind behaviours or
emotions
▪ Implicit creativity support: analogy (Other Worlds)
when being a detective in a game
▪ Explicit creativity support: combinational creativity
techniques offered when managing the clues
▪ Boardgame vs. Video game
© MIRROR Project - Co-Funded by EU IST FP7 – www.mirror-project.eu
© MIRROR Project - Co-Funded by EU IST FP7 – www.mirror-project.eu
Goals for the future work
▪ Define the relationship between creativity and
games for motivated learning in terms of
reflective problem solving, by proposing a
domain-independent descriptive model;
▪ Iteratively inform design of the model and verify
its mechanisms by designing and evaluating
prototypes in dementia care domain, in a series
of empirical studies.
© MIRROR Project - Co-Funded by EU IST FP7 – www.mirror-project.eu
Creative mind plays with the objects it
loves. – K. Robinson, Out of Our Minds,
2001
Want to get in touch?
[email protected]
@anjasisarica
© MIRROR Project - Co-Funded by EU IST FP7 – www.mirror-project.eu