Intergenerational Digital Play: Toolkit and Game Prototype
[UX Design, Design Strategy, Game Design]
AI generated portfolio cover created with ChatGPT using the project’s toolkit visuals, game screenshots, and cultural object references.
Description
This Major Research Project explored how digital play can support social connection between older adults and university students in non-kin community settings. The project focused on accessible game interaction, facilitation, onboarding, and evaluation conditions that help participants engage comfortably across generational differences.
My Role
UX Researcher, Design Strategist
Collaborator
Yang Yi
Principal Advisor
Dr. Sara Diamond, OCAD University
Community Partner
Timeline
Sep 2025 - Apr 2026
Format
Major Research Project, Toolkit, Prototype
Most intergenerational digital play research focuses on family relationships, where trust and shared history already exist. In community based non kin settings, older adults and younger participants may not have a clear social script for how to interact, help each other, or play together. This creates design challenges around accessibility, confidence, role balance, and social comfort.
Key Outputs
Selected Pages
The design toolkit translates research findings from the MRP into practical tools for designing intergenerational digital play experiences. It provides guidance for pairing participants, onboarding players, supporting older adults during gameplay, observing interaction patterns, and evaluating social comfort across generations. The toolkit is designed for designers, facilitators, and community organizations who want to create accessible and meaningful play experiences between older adults and younger participants.
Across the Table is a cooperative digital puzzle game prototype that applies the toolkit’s design principles in a playable format. It uses separated information, shared problem solving, and culturally familiar household objects to encourage communication between older adults and younger participants. The game world includes everyday items such as calendars, radios, family photos, books, and medicine jars, creating an approachable entry point for memory sharing, conversation, and social comfort.
The clue booklet creates an information split between two players. One player reads bilingual handwritten clues from the booklet, while the other explores the digital interface. Because neither player has the full answer alone, they must communicate, compare details, and reason together to find the password. This design supports intergenerational collaboration through a low pressure mix of paper based reading and digital interaction.
The evaluation tools were created to prepare, observe, and assess the facilitated intergenerational play session. The pre-session questionnaire captured participants’ baseline comfort with digital devices, games, and intergenerational interaction. The observation sheet documented collaboration, confusion, role balance, and support behaviors during gameplay. The post-session interview prompts gathered feedback on rule clarity, accessibility, social comfort, and willingness to play again.
