JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Most cancer treatment today is taking place in out-patient clinics, however it might be necessary for the patient to be admitted to hospital departments due to severe side effects or complications. In such a situation support from family and social relations can be crucial for the patients´ emotional well-being. Many young adolescents and children that experience parental cancer describe how they are not seen, heard, or listened to as the worried relative they are. Within the intensive care unit, it has been recommended that early supportive interventions are tailored to include children of the intensive care patient, a similar approach might be relevant in the oncological setting. To our knowledge no studies have explored how to involve the young relatives during visiting their sick parent at an oncological department. Recently a framework for developing theory-driven, evidence-based serious games for health has been suggested, a process which includes stakeholders from various disciplines, but works with one design solution only. It is however possible, that bringing together different sciences such as design, art and health care allow a broader perspective resulting in improved solutions.

Objective:

This study aims at developing tools to enhance a meaningful interaction between a cancer sick parent and their child/children while visiting the parent during admission to hospital.

Methods:

Four different groups of design students within visual design were tasked to develop a game addressing the objective of the study. The applied methods to enable the design were a mixture of lectures (phase I), interviewing (phase II) and workshops with feedback (phase III) and evaluation sessions (phase IV). The activities in the four phases were predefined. This modified user-design had the child (aged 4-18 years) of a cancer sick parent as its primary user.

Results:

Our results show how four different games aiming at establishing a meaningful interaction between a cancer sick parent and their child/children were designed based on the same information. All games had the ability to make cancer sick adults and their children interact on a common platform with a joint goal, however the themes and graphical expression used differed between the games.

Conclusions:

In this study, several different games have been developed for the same purpose, e.g. improving interaction between a cancer sick parent and their child/children. However, the study showed that even when several designed are based on the same core user interaction and genre, they may appear quite different in their themes and graphic design, indicating that the development of serious games can be highly dependent on the designers involved. This must be considered when e.g. a hospital aims at developing multiple games for different purposes, or when the best game for a specific purpose is requested.