Ocean Adventures – Playful training of cognitive skills for children with ADHD

In the winter term 2019/20, a group of bachelor students developed a mobile application for children with ADHD to train executive functions. Therefore, they designed the game “Ocean Adventure” that focus on the abilities shifting and divided attention. We wanted to investigate whether the training of cognitive and motor abilities can be merged effectively. Hence, the challenge was to implement the game interaction in three different form, so that the motor skills of the players were provoked at the same time. The aim of the game is to feed seagulls with fish of different colors. The wishes of the seagulls which color of fish they like to have change regularly, so the player has to react to this change. There are also some distracting stimuli, such as a shark that scares the fish away, an octopus that blocks the view with its ink, or a swordfish that crawls among the other fish, but which the seagulls do not like. Within this project a user testing was conducted to investigate the usability of the three different interactions and to evaluate enjoyment, difficulty and usefulness of the app. The results showed that the app was received very well, made fun and was challenging depending on the different interactions.