Brain Training Games for Seniors: Looking for the best brain training app

This arti­cle reports on a series of focus group stud­ies car­ried out at the Son­ic Arts Research Cen­tre, Queen’s Uni­ver­si­ty Belfast, North­ern Ire­land. The aim was to iden­ti­fy the key moti­va­tion­al fac­tors influ­enc­ing seniors’ engage­ment with mobile brain train­ing tech­nol­o­gy in order to inform the design of a brain train­ing tool which is accept­able / enjoy­able to tar­get users.

The result is an iPhone appli­ca­tion named ‘Brain Jog’ which can be down­loaded from here for free. The appli­ca­tion is being used for a fur­ther study to bet­ter under­stand what con­sti­tutes an enjoy­able brain train­ing game expe­ri­ence for seniors and is the first step in a larg­er study which will inves­ti­gate how effec­tive ‘brain train­ing’ apps can be in pre­vent­ing cog­ni­tive decline / demen­tia. Users over the age of 50 are encour­aged to down­load the free app and take part.

Now more about the present study. Thir­ty-four par­tic­i­pants aged 50+ took part in four focus groups last­ing approx­i­mate­ly 2 hours each. Each focus group con­sist­ed of three sub-ses­sions: an intro­duc­to­ry ses­sion, a ‘tran­si­tion­al activ­i­ty’ where the par­tic­i­pants were giv­en 40 mins hands-on expe­ri­ence with com­mer­cial­ly avail­able brain train­ing soft­ware fol­lowed by a ses­sion in which key ques­tions were asked. Main­ly iPhones and iPods were used dur­ing the tran­si­tion­al activ­i­ty, although the Nin­ten­do DS, pc-based and Inter­net-based plat­forms were also employed. A range of com­mer­cial­ly avail­able brain train­ing soft­ware was used.

Dur­ing the key ques­tions ses­sion, dis­cus­sions in rela­tion to the brain train­ing games played dur­ing the tran­si­tion­al activ­i­ty were steered accord­ing to these main questions:

Are there any aspects in par­tic­u­lar that would moti­vate you play again? 

Are there any aspects in par­tic­u­lar that would turn you off play­ing again?

Is there any­thing that could be added to these games that would com­pel you to play them more?

Par­tic­i­pants were also probed with a list of promi­nent moti­va­tion­al fac­tors dis­cov­ered through a search of the lit­er­a­ture in order to fur­ther stim­u­late the dis­cus­sion accord­ing to the fol­low­ing question:

Which of these moti­va­tions, if any, do peo­ple think would be rea­sons to play if they were fac­tored into com­put­er-based puz­zle games?

Audio from the focus groups was record­ed. Dur­ing the analy­sis, rel­e­vant com­ments were cod­ed as either moti­va­tion­al or de-moti­va­tion­al and fur­ther sub-cat­e­go­rized accord­ing to promi­nent themes such as ‘chal­lenge’ or ‘usabil­i­ty issues’.

RESULTS

Aris­ing from the cod­ing pro­ce­dure, 237 moti­va­tion­al com­ments made up 19 moti­va­tion­al fac­tors and 123 de-moti­va­tion­al com­ments made up 15 de-moti­va­tion­al fac­tors. The rank­ing of the top moti­va­tion­al / de-moti­va­tion­al fac­tors are shown in the tables below.

Table 1. Rank­ing of moti­va­tion­al factors

Chal­lenge was the high­est ranked moti­va­tion­al fac­tor across all focus groups. The major­i­ty of com­ments val­ue chal­lenge as a means to achievement:

“I find them quite chal­leng­ing. When I fin­ish I think ‘see if I can bet­ter that score’” — (p2, FG1).

The next high­est ranked moti­va­tion­al fac­tor relat­ed to the brain train­ing games’ per­ceived prac­ti­cal ben­e­fits or the need for such:

“It could make you more alert and I think it’s very impor­tant we keep our­selves in a cer­tain con­di­tion” – (p13, FG2).

Table 2. Rank­ing of de-moti­va­tion­al factors

‘Usabil­i­ty issues’ was the high­est ranked de-moti­va­tion­al fac­tor:

“To me it was­n’t stim­u­lat­ing, it was frus­trat­ing because… no mat­ter what I did, it would­n’t accept any­thing…” – (p16, FG3).

The next high­est ranked de-moti­va­tion­al fac­tor relat­ed to ‘poor com­mu­ni­ca­tion’ from the brain train­ing games usu­al­ly in the form of poor instruction:

“Instruc­tions — Why keep an eye on the time? No rea­son giv­en. Felt uncer­tain about what to do.” – (p28, FG3).

CONCLUSION

In terms of the first hour or so of play, users in this age group will be most moti­vat­ed to engage with mobile brain train­ing game tech­nol­o­gy when it’s per­ceived as pro­vid­ing a good chal­lenge, of some prac­ti­cal ben­e­fit and is in some way famil­iar. Users will see usabil­i­ty issues, poor com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the game and games that are inap­pro­pri­ate­ly timed, i.e. too fast, as bar­ri­ers to engagement.

You can help us fur­ther under­stand what con­sti­tutes an enjoy­able puz­zle game expe­ri­ence for seniors by down­load­ing the free iPhone app and par­tic­i­pat­ing in the next study.

– Don­al O’Brien is a PhD can­di­date at the Son­ic Arts Research Cen­tre in Queen’s Uni­ver­si­ty Belfast. His work is con­cerned with mobile dig­i­tal game design and eval­u­a­tion for seniors. His main inter­ests are tech­nol­o­gy accep­tance, user-cen­tered design, qual­i­ta­tive research and com­put­er programming.

Relat­ed arti­cle: Are men­tal­ly-stim­u­lat­ing activ­i­ties good or bad for the brain? The true story.