Week 1, 2 – Preliminary research and project team branding

Hello! We are a group of students from the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). This semester, we are working with some researchers from the CMU BioMed department to create an experience targeted at patients with heart failures and their caretakers.

Our team consists of 4 students:

1. Sarah (me) – Producer, programmer, blogger
2. Tony – Writer, game designer
3. Boyao – Programmer
4. Aly – Experience designer, artist

We had our first meeting with Jim, our client, in week 2. Jim was a wealth of information – before we even met, he had sent us a number of resources, ranging from research papers to slide decks to video clips. This allowed us to go into the meeting prepared, and we gained a much better understanding of the issue at hand (patients and their caregivers often have to make a life changing decision about whether to accept an extremely invasive surgery or not in 48 hours) and what was expected of us (ensure they understand their options and better support their decision making).

Based on that, we came up with the following description for our project:

With medicine’s expanding array of life-prolonging technologies, older and sicker people are increasingly offered invasive, but often life-saving interventions. For example, implantable heart assist devices, such as left ventricular assist devices (LVAD), can increase a patient’s chance of survival, but come with major risks and lifestyle changes.  At a time when people most need the ability to make reasoned, informed decisions about their health care, they are often most compromised due to stress and fear.

Researchers in Carnegie Mellon University’s (CMU) Biomedical Engineering (BioMed) Department have been working to develop decision support tools to help patients and their loved ones decide whether or not to pursue surgery to implant mechanical circulatory support devices.  But to date they often overwhelm patients with dry, clinical data and ignore the significant emotional aspects of the decision.

 

This project aims to use transformative game techniques that both inform patients and their caretakers, while supporting cognitive and emotional decision making. This will be done by transforming existing decision aids into an interactive form, tailoring the experience to patients’ specific situations, better addressing specific questions and enhancing values clarification.  We believe that using transformative gaming techniques will lead to greater knowledge, improved decision quality, less regret, higher satisfaction among patients, and ultimately better clinical outcomes.

Within our team, we also threw around a number of ideas for a team name, before unanimously settling on “Code Blue”.  For the uninitiated, this phrase is used when a patient requires immediate medical attention, usually after suffering from a cardiac arrest. Our artist, Aly, then came up with a really great logo using our team colors of blue and red:

As a bonus, the color of our project room is blue and red too!

We’ll be reading through more of the materials which Jim shared with us, pitching our preliminary ideas to him, as well as coming up with a team photo next week.