Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Serious Games for Cognitive Health Training and Monitoring in Aging: Usability and Acceptability Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Serious games are increasingly investigated as engaging digital interventions to support cognitive health in older adults. In parallel, underdiagnosis and insufficient continuous monitoring of cognitive decline remain major challenges in routine care, highlighting the need for digital solutions that combine cognitive training with monitoring functionalities. To the best of our knowledge, the potential of serious games to serve not only as cognitive training tools but also as indirect monitoring instruments of cognitive health remains underexplored, particularly in real-world care contexts.
Objective:
The aim of this study was to evaluate the usability and acceptability of a set of serious games designed to train cognitive functions in older adults, as well as the usability, acceptability, and perceived clinical value of an associated monitoring platform that returns gameplay data.
Methods:
An exploratory mixed-methods study was conducted with older adults (n = 18) recruited through a home-care service and its community initiatives. Participants used a tablet-based serious games application for cognitive training at home over a three-month period. Interviews, focus groups, and gameplay data were used to evaluate the usability and acceptability of the games. Gameplay metrics were collected and processed to generate data available on the monitoring platform. The usability, acceptability, and perceived value of the monitoring platform were evaluated by geriatric nurses (n = 3) through interviews and focus groups.
Results:
The set of serious games was perceived as usable, accessible, and acceptable by older adults, including participants with limited prior digital experience. Many seniors described the games as cognitively stimulating and enjoyable, reporting a positive overall user experience. Engagement varied across individuals, with heterogeneous patterns of use observed over the study period. Nurses found the monitoring platform insightful and potentially relevant to clinical practice for supporting continuous cognitive monitoring.
Conclusions:
This exploratory study supports the feasibility of integrating serious games-based cognitive training with a monitoring platform in the home-care setting. The usability and acceptability of the games, together with the perceived clinical relevance of the monitored data, suggest that such a combined digital health system may complement routine care.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.