Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased isolation of caregivers making the development of an in-home assessment tool timely. This study examined the usability of the Caregiver Assessment using Serious Gaming Technology (CAST) version 2.0, an application that assesses task performance and stress in dementia caregivers. Following a demonstration on the CAST app, five representative user participants compared versions 1.0 to 2.0, and five participants, also representative users, evaluated version 2.0. Participants provided recommendations for substantive changes including: a reminder feature addition, addition of incentives, updates on appearance and ease of use, and updating the word scramble game (the most significant finding of this usability study). All participants reported their experiences and provided recommendations for further enhancements during semi-structured interviews with social work researchers. Results indicated that the modifications had considerably improved the application's usability. Changes in readability and use were encouraging for future use although continued development of additional games for the app is crucial for ongoing development.

摘要

COVID-19大流行增加了看护人的隔离度，这使得及时开发家庭评估工具成为可能。这项研究使用严重游戏技术（CAST）2.0版检查了看护者评估的可用性，该应用程序可评估痴呆症看护者的任务绩效和压力。在CAST应用程序上进行了演示之后，五个代表用户参与者将版本1.0与2.0进行了比较，还有五个参与者（也是代表用户）评估了版本2.0。参与者提供了有关实质性更改的建议，包括：提醒功能的添加，奖励的添加，外观和易用性的更新以及单词争夺游戏的更新（此可用性研究的最重要发现）。所有参与者都报告了他们的经验，并在与社会工作研究人员进行半结构化访谈时提出了进一步提高建议。结果表明，这些修改大大改善了应用程序的可用性。尽管继续开发适用于该应用的其他游戏对于持续开发至关重要，但可读性和使用方面的变化对于将来的使用是令人鼓舞的。