Date: May 2021 - Present Day
Role: Unity Developer / Lead Gameplay Designer
Team Size: 4
Platform: Exergames/PC
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Responsibilities include designing and developing an experience that accommodated for ICU patients with low cognitive function that doubled as therapy
"Your Kitchen" is a medical game created to help ICU patients recover as well as track their current recovery for medical professionals.
The game was developed on Healthy Design's Refraint device, using a custom Arduino controller as an input device for patients. The patient would be able to move their arm while they are in their hospital bed to move and cook with an on screen pan that was mapped to their movements.
In addition to being a functioning game for patients, the game would also track the patients data in a way that a doctor could evaluate and know whether or not a patient was improving or not as they played the game.
First VDD of Sautéing Activity
Developing for ICU patient's represented a strong design challenge, as we would be developing for a player who would likely be in some form of stupor from being sedated and intubated. In addition, depending on their reason for being in the ICU they may also find themselves physically impaired as well.
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To achieve this, I developed a single activity game that had the player sauté a pan of food over a burner. The burner(s) would move around thus requiring the patient to maintain their position over the burner to cook the food in as little time as possible.
Testing the game revealed that while making the game simple was definitly a good idea for ICU patients, the game in it's current state was still too complicated for most ICU patients.
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As a result of this feedback, I decided to remove the wheels form the burners and have them be stationary. The burners would then alternate which one was active.
Having four different corners to manage between ultimately ended up being still too difficult for some patients, and our physical device was unable to properly accommodate for forwards and backwards momentum.
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As such, the final kitchen design features four burners in a neat horizontal row that best accommodates a simple left right X-axis for ICU patients.
Second Iteration of the Sautéing Game
The build at this point had a total of four burners, challenging the player to move between all four of them
Final Kitchen Layout
Developing an​Adaptive controller
In addition to developing a game that would be friendly for ICU patients, I was also in charge of figuring out how to enable all patients to use the controller to the same degree despite potential physical limitations.
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To do this, two steps where needed. The first step was to identify how far the patient could actually move their arms. Some patients could in theory have total motor movement, but it was also likely that some patients would have mild to sever motor impairment.
The calibration scene would grab what the patent selects as the middle of the screen as well as the farthest they could reach up, down, left, and right.
Using the gathered calibration data, we were able to always place the player's cursor (pan) within reach of all necessary gameplay elements.
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This was achieved by extending the distance of the cursor whenever the player was moving their arm in a direction that they struggled with and retracting in directions they excelled in.
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This way, no matter the physical aptitude of the patient, they were always able to play the game.
The end result of this system us a tool that will allow the controller to adapt for any patient regardless of who is playing or what game it is.