A Location-Based Game for Two Generations: Teaching Mobile Technology to the Elderly with the Support of Young Volunteers
This addresses social and technological challenges for the elderly, but it is incremental as it applies existing game-based methods to a specific demographic.
The researchers tackled the problem of aging by developing a cooperative location-based game using tablets to address social inclusion, technology education, motivation, and physical activity for the elderly, with preliminary results showing improvements in technical skills, physical activity, and intergenerational interaction.
This paper presents a cooperative location-based game for the elderly with the use of tablets equipped with mobile application. The game was designed to tackle at once several crucial topics related to the issue of aging, namely the social inclusion, education in the field of modern technology, motivation for learning as well as physical activity. Mixed-aged teams consisting of two players: a junior and a senior took part in the game. The preliminary results suggest that the game can successfully address a number of issues including improving the elderly technical skills, increasing the elderly physical activity as well as positive intergenerational interaction. The paper describes the game setup in details and presents some initial data gathered during the gameplay.