A Serious Game for the well-being of CSN parents

Abstract

Many parents of Children with Special Needs (CSN parents) struggle with finding the right balance in their life between doing all their responsibilities, taking care of their child with special needs and taking care of themselves. As a result, they take less care of themselves, by eliminate their needs. Therefore, the aim was to design a serious game for parents with children with special needs and should be playable during retraite weekends within the constraints of the COVID-19 measurements. However, due to COVID-19, there was no opportunity to create a physical serious game that can be played during the retraite weekends, thus an online version was created that could easily be converted to a physical design. For the analysis phase, to understand the issue of self-care, five CSN parents and an orthopedagogue were interviewed along with literature research. Also, serious gaming was studied by literature research, reviewing examples of serious games, trying out serious games, talking with experts and being a facilitator of an online serious game I signed up for. With the insights of the analysis phase the design goal was translated in the following transfer effects: 1) Create awareness about the importance of avoiding an unbalance in energy to increase self-care, 2) Create awareness about having the option to increase self-care, and 3) Alter to or reinforce the attitudinal change towards a creative problem-solving attitude for providing self-care. During the project, the game environment changed from real-life to the online platform Miro. A brainstorm session and co-creation followed, aside from individual brainstorming and with other creative minds. Three concepts were developed and tested and in collaboration with Ontzorghuis one was selected. The Bekommerkom game was created after four iteration cycles with different prototypes and four tests. The last two tests were with CSN parents. Based on the reactions of the players and observations I can conclude that the Bekommerkom game is evaluated as successful in achieving the transfer effects. To achieve this, both a well-prepared facilitator and a video call service (e.g. Zoom) are required. Playing the game made the players think and reflect on their life. Many shared to do things differently concerning self-care and thought about possible solutions to improve their situation (like asking for help). Also, Ontzorghuis is content with the result and wants to further develop the Bekommerkom game and a physical version of it in the future.