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Bgaze Therapy Game User Research and Prototype

@Braingaze

This is an evaluative User Research project I led at Braingaze. The high-level objective of the study is to evaluate how our users perceive a gaming approach to treating ADHD- Attention Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder and to understand our user's mental model thus informing our next design iteration of the Bgaze Therapy Game. Some information is removed or modified due to confidentiality. 

Fig 1.1 BGaze Therapy Version one game

Background and Goals

The Development team needed to address pain points regarding low retention rates and customer conversion rates. The team was preparing to launch the next iteration of the game on the iOS platform. 

Generative Research goals

  • Understand our customer perception of using Serious games to combat ADHD

Design Research goals

  • Understand whether users needed more feedback regarding their progress 

  • Understand whether users are able to play the game - Usability ( Games affordances, discoverability, and learnability)

  • Evaluate the effectiveness and discoverability of user interactions for various functions of the game such as pause/play and exit.

Method

These questions were addressed using a mixed-method approach of Participatory design and surveys.

Workshops were split into two phases:

Workshop 1(Mataró):

Six Participants, four children with ADHD, a Front-end Developer, and a Psychologist.

Workshop 2(Tarragona):

Ten participants, nine Adolescents with ADHD, and a psychologist.

Workshop 3(Tarragona):

Ten participants, nine Adolescents with ADHD, and a psychologist.

A total of 18 survey responses were collected.

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Fig 1.2 Workshop Affinity Mapping Excercise outcome of Team 2

Crucial Insights

Some of our crucial findings at the end of our research project were:

When starting the game, the onboarding journey failed to explain the necessary steps to take, and various points of action to play the game. The users had little idea of how the game improved their ADHD symptoms and how to measure the same. Users were frustrated by the delay in eye gaze navigation due to technical errors. 

Our first level of action was to reduce the latency in eye gaze navigation and control. The second set of actions was to focus on improving the onboarding journey. We introduced a new milestone where the user is introduced to how the eye gaze calibration is done before starting the game. Introducing new levels and feedback on their performance level was iterated into the design process.

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For additional findings and learnings, please contact - preerampr@gmail.com.

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Fig 1.4 Onboarding Journey Before User Research - Added suggestions ( UX Writing)

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Fig 1.3 New Onboarding Journey after User Research

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Fig 1.3 New Onboarding Journey User flow for calibrating eye gaze

Research Impact

Strategic Impact

  • Product and sales strategy changed backed by user research insights.

  • Design guidelines and Research repository left for the company to take over from.​

Stakeholder Collaboration Impact

  • Improved UX maturity of the company by involving stakeholders in various research activities.

  • UXR​ had a strategic partner of the Dev and ops team.

  • UXR championed user research and collaborated between cross-functional teams. 

Product Impact

  • A whole new onboarding journey has been developed after this research project as there were repetitive mentions of game flow being unclear.

  • Through collaboration, the developer was able to reduce the delay in latency of controlling the game with eye gaze 

  • Technical errors such as the car being uncontrollable once in the third lane were rectified

  • The Game with multi-levels and abstractions is incorporated into the prototype.

My Learnings

  • Designing workshops for neurodivergent participants is way more challenging than for atypical participants, hence a different approach is required to keep them interested than the traditional route, such as tweaking the activities customized to those participants.

  • Stakeholder engagement is very important especially in units with lower UX maturity to get buy-in.

  • Delivering the bad news to stakeholders requires practice and the right time.

*For more details about the project, please contact me

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