Gamified Participatory Design Workshop for Children with ADHD

Abstract

This thesis is an exploratory case study on how to organize, create, run and evaluate game design workshop with a combined group of neurotypical children and children diagnosed with ADHD (attention deficit / hyperactivity disorder). The workshop applies principles of gamification and rehabilitation of EXecutive function and ATtention (EXAT) intervention for children with ADHD. This workshop aims to gain knowledge on how to combine game design goals with therapeutic goals in a way that it would both aid in designing an embodied game for remediation purposes for ADHD, and in getting children to feel empowered as well as to help them learn valuable social skills. The workshop used gamified material to guide, support and motivate the children throughout the sessions in both the workshop activities and in social skill training, as well as to collect children's experiences of the workshop. In this thesis, participatory design method, EXAT-based strategies and gamification of the workshops will be described, and conclusions of both efficacy and difficulties of these approaches in this context will be presented. The results of this thesis provide a list of recommendations related to the organization of PD workshop. The children in this work demonstrated improvement in the social skills and they were able to produce creative, usable, and valuable ideas for a game prototype. Based on the feedback gathered from the children, the workshop and the game design activities were enjoyable and successful in empowering the children.