Serious games design considerations for people with Alzheimer's disease in developing nations

There is a wide range of serious games all over the world which are used as a Cognitive Stimulation Therapy to treat Alzheimer's patients. But the utilization of these applications in the developing countries is very low due to low literacy in English and ICT. The aim of the study is to identify basic design considerations for making games more accessible, utilizable and stimulating for people with Alzheimer's disease who lack IT literacy skills as well as English knowledge. This research utilizes qualitative data in the research design which comprised of two stages: Scoping stage and Prototype development stage. Scoping stage consisted of an observation conducted with a sample of 6 patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease giving a prevailing serious game to identify the issues in them. Participatory design was followed in the Prototype development stage, conducted with a sample of 12 patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease which consisted of 2 observations: one during the developing stage and the other after the development. Through the study we have found some design considerations that can be used to overcome low utilization of serious games. Some of our findings were games are more accurate when developed based on MOCA test and relating on their day to day lives, simple and easy games with short duration, using real images in the games, bigger buttons with more space between them, instructions in their native language etc. The findings suggest that developing serious games following these design considerations would make these games more accessible, utilizable and stimulating for people with Alzheimer's disease who lack English knowledge and IT literacy skills, especially in Sri Lankan context.