Gamification of asthma spirometry tests
Children with asthma often need to go to the hospital to do checkup spirometry tests, which is not a pleasant test to do. I worked as a research assistant on this university project to think with children about ways to gamify this experience and make sure children can execute these tests in a fun, but still proper way. I'm a co-author of the published paper about this research.
This project aimed to gamify the spirometry testing so that the tests could be performed at home in a fun and informative way. To identify entertaining and appropriate metaphors, we worked together with 10 children (6-9 years) from a child day care.
We held multiple sessions to collect a 100 metaphor ideas for breathing in and out. I was the leader of these co-design sessions and created the necessary materials for them (explanations of asthma, clarifying images, example metaphors). I made inspiration cards to stimulate children who struggled with ideas. After reaching a 100 metaphors, we had group discussions and the children used stickers to indicate their favourite ideas. We made sure all the children got complimented on their ideas and did not feel less than others who had more favoured ideas.
Lastly, I drew out the 20 favourite ideas and we held new sessions with the children where we thought deeper about errors that could occur during the breathing tests, such as early expiration. Together with the children we thought about how we could modify the 20 ideas to also account for these possible errors.
This project aimed to gamify the spirometry testing so that the tests could be performed at home in a fun and informative way. To identify entertaining and appropriate metaphors, we worked together with 10 children (6-9 years) from a child day care.
We held multiple sessions to collect a 100 metaphor ideas for breathing in and out. I was the leader of these co-design sessions and created the necessary materials for them (explanations of asthma, clarifying images, example metaphors). I made inspiration cards to stimulate children who struggled with ideas. After reaching a 100 metaphors, we had group discussions and the children used stickers to indicate their favourite ideas. We made sure all the children got complimented on their ideas and did not feel less than others who had more favoured ideas.
Lastly, I drew out the 20 favourite ideas and we held new sessions with the children where we thought deeper about errors that could occur during the breathing tests, such as early expiration. Together with the children we thought about how we could modify the 20 ideas to also account for these possible errors.
When I left the project, 10 final metaphors were implemented and by now, they have been tested at the hospital.
Last but not least, I'm a co-author of one of several papers that have been written about the project, which was published in CHI PLAY 2020! Click here to read it.