GAIR

HEALTH APP FOR IGD

BRIEF

Internet games are currently one of the most popular leisure activities and hobbies worldwide. Global games audience estimated between 2.2 and 2.6 billion people spreading out from 6 to 64 year olds.

Along with this growth in population, there is increasing concern over gaming reaching very high hours per week.

Some individuals may use games excessively but non-problematically and another might experience significant impairment in their daily live as a consequence of their excessive gaming.

So far, reports of excessive gaming, denominated as “computer/video game addiction”, have been discussed in the popular press as well as in recent scientific research. The studies have reported the prevalence of disordered gamers is 4-11%

Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) – Persistent and recurrent use of the Internet to engage in games, often with other players, leading to clinically significant impairment or distress.

AIM

PROCESS

The primary aim of this project is to develop a Health App for IGD. The research intention is to examine how the Health Apps can help the affected people and create a tool for individuals who are struggling with excessive video gaming. Another purpose is to explore IGD and raise awareness about it.

To achieve the outlined objectives and the overall aim of this study the “DT Method: Exploration” was chosen. This methodology defines the following project phases: Inspiration, Ideation and Implementation. To deliver the project the design team followed the Scrum project management framework.

The project consisted of the following phases and steps:

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CONCLUSION

We created a tool for individuals who are struggling with excessive video gaming. Based on the first standardized psychometric test (IGD-20 Test, Pontes et al., 2014) to assess IGD according to the nine IGD criteria as suggested by the American Psychiatric Association.

The main limitation of the app is that it doesn’t fully cover its outlined purpose, which is Awareness, Identification and Recovery Guidance. The Identification part of the app is fully functional, however the rest of the topics are only partially covered. To get full access to the resources user will need to acquire the Pro version which doesn’t exist at the moment.

Next step is to test the app on a large sample of users. If this testing finds serious issues or much needed optimizations, they will need to be implemented. Later, a fundraising campaign can be created to support development of the Pro version of the App with following features: