Developing serious games to improve children's compliance in chronic illnesses: Input from two use cases

Abstract

Background and Objectives: Developing serious games (SGs) for children is challenging, especially when dealing with complex medical diagnosis. Enhancing children's compliance for the treatment of chronic conditions is a crucial challenge that requires caring about the engagement of users in the game experience already from the initial stages of the development. Materials and Methods: Participatory design is the methodological key to trace the right path toward an effective and easy-to-use game; specific methodological settings are necessary to collect meaningful feedback and guide the creation of the game. Our article reports the involvement of 14 young users in two different stages of the design and development of two SGs for chronic clinical conditions (Crohn's disease and cystic fibrosis). Results: Specific feedbacks were reported about game contents (e.g., the preference for anthropomorphic avatars) and technological issues (e.g., the need of a graphical tutorial). Conclusions: Using the same methodological approach in two different phases of the development allows to highlight children's perspective toward a technological solution addressing clinical compliance.