The Design Patterns of Exergames with Cognitive Benefits

Motivation

Exergames are among the most consistently promising cognitive interventions for older adults. Unfortunately, the promise of exergame success in laboratory studies falls short in widespread adoption. Lab-created intervention games lack the features of mainstream games that drive player engagement. Collaboration between game designers and cognitive scientists is rare, in part because they lack a common tongue to negotiate design problems. We consider pattern languages as a modern Rosetta Stone that enables clear communication between cognitive scientists and game designers. Here, we engaged game designers, cognitive scientists, and HCI researchers in generating a pattern language for designing exergames. We derived 14 design patterns from a corpus of cognitively beneficial commercial games and categorized them into an exertion framework. The resulting pattern language is legible to both cognitive scientists and game designers, allowing them to create fun and engaging exergames that are designed to provide cognitive benefits and engage players beyond standard laboratory settings.