Exploring Personal Boundaries with Adults who have Developmental Disabilities through Serious Games and Brainwaves
Arts
Independent Study
People with developmental disabilities are often at risk of being targets of abuse. With little supporting resources out there for both adults and their caretakers on identifying personal boundaries, victimization rates remain alarmingly high. This project aims to explore the gamification of behavioral learning to help users with disabilities identify personal boundaries and at-risk behaviors with real-time feedback. A prototype Unity game, titled "Boundaries," was developed to provide randomized situational cases in identifying personal relationship boundaries. We designed our game through an interdisciplinary approach focusing on interactive media, engineering, and user experience. Ten users with developmental disabilities evaluated the game to provide run-time player responses, brainwave feedback, and qualitative survey answers. Our results suggest that the game was a successful medium for engaging users in considering personal boundaries. Significant differences in both game-play and brainwave activity were found between users eliciting low, medium, and high-risk behaviors. We hope to share this work to begin a discussion on the scarcity of resources for learning and to explore considerations for interactive behavioral education games for adults of all abilities.
