JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Currently, many CAPD screening tests are available for children and serious games are frequently used as a tool for the diagnostic process of different neural deficits and disorders in health care. However, it has not been possible to find a proposal that unifies both ideas. On the other hand, the process of validation and improvement of serious games, in general terms, does not take into account the player-game interaction, thus omitting valuable information about the playability and usability of the game.

Objective:

This study presents Amalia's Planet, a game conceived for use in school environments, which allows a first assessment of the child through the performance of the proposed tasks related to different aspects of auditory performance. In addition, the game defines a series of events in relation to the execution of the tasks that will be evaluated for the subsequent optimisation of its performance and the improvement of its usability.

Methods:

Using screening tools based on the use of serious game technologies, a total of 87 school-age children were evaluated in order to test the various hypotheses put forward in this study. By grouping users according to whether they have suffered from hearing impairment, both the discriminant power and the assessment of the playability and usability of the final solution were examined by using traditional statistical techniques and Process Mining algorithms, respectively.

Results:

With a confidence level of 80% for Test 2 (p-value = 0.186), there is no statistical evidence to reject the null hypothesis that player performance is affected by whether or not the player have suffered an auditory impairment. Furthermore, the tool allowed the screening of two players initially categorised as “healthy", due to their low level of performance in the tests and the similarity of their behaviour with the group of children previously diagnosed. With regard to the validation of the proposed solution, the use of Process Mining techniques made possible to detect the existence of events that last too long, which can lead to player frustration, and to discover small structural flaws in the game.

Conclusions:

Serious games seem to be appropriate tools for the screening process of children at risk of CAPD. On the other hand, the set of Process Mining techniques provides a reliable source of information about the playability and usability of the solution to the development team, allowing its continuous optimisation.