Problem

First-year residents face a myriad of challenges while transiting from medical training in their education, to providing medical services. One of the most stressful situations first-year residents face is being on night call duty, as one must work long, nocturnal hours, with limited staffing and equipment support. This is on top of coping with the lack of experience, the potential of unexpected surges in patients, and the pressure of making extremely consequential decisions. This stressful, high intensity environment renders it challenging for first-year residents to manage their time and prioritize tasks in triaging patients while ensuring one does not suffer burnout from overworking and lack of self-care. These circumstances have been worsened by the Covid-19 pandemic stressing the healthcare system and its workers due to the huge increase in patients seeking emergency medical attention.

Solution

The developed Night Call Game is a Serious Game that aims to simulate real-life situations that occur in a night call duty, helping players to familiarize themselves with the hectic schedules within a realistic hospital layout. This game provides players a chance to practice the skills of time management, task prioritization and self-care, without the severe consequences of making a mistake as it would in real-life, with the objective of enabling and refining their ability to apply skills & techniques learnt from the game, into a real life setting during their actual night call duty.  

Game Objectives

Scoreboard

Players are then graded based on their performance in the game related to the above 3 game objectives.

The Design Process

Analysis of Other Third-Person Games

To adopt a more story-driven approach with a focus on the environment rather than the action, a third-person player experience is favored for the development of a serious night call game. Being able to see how a game character walks, interacts with the environment and what the environment looks like can allow players to better appreciate their role as a player in the game.  As such, we studied the user interface of games such as Assassin Creed, Grand Theft Auto (GTA) and The Legend of Zelda since these were games where the storyline was strongly emphasized.

Self-determination Theory

Autonomy - Players can make their own decision in the game

Competence - Players can level up in the game

Relatedness - Players can communicate with NPCs

Finalizing on Levels, Economy and Assets

Levels

In this game, there would be 3 levels (Level 1 - "Slow Night", Level 2 - "Smooth-running Night", Level 3 - "Busy Night"). During these levels, players are put into different situations that focus on either the prioritization of tasks or self-care and gain different skills in each level.

Economy

In this game, the player must achieve the game objective of treating all the patients properly within a set time period with sufficient energy and alertness levels. Each action (walking/running/treating a patient) will result in the depletion of these levels and the player can choose to take a nap or eat a snack in order to replenish his/her energy and alertness levels. This provides players with a sense of autonomy, yet they must learn how to look after themselves and prioritize their time in treating their patients.

Assets

As for assets, we worked alongside the game artists, looking for a hospital setting, vending machines etc. Other assets purchased were used to treat the patients in the game such as nasal prong etc.

Scenarios - Pneumonia & High Blood Pressure

There are currently 2 scenarios that players would have to face - a patient with pneumonia or high blood pressure. Each of these scenarios have symptoms, condition to wellness (the type of treatment for the patient such as type of medicine or amount of oxygen supplied etc.) as well as condition to death (the amount of time a patient can remain untreated before death or when wrong medication is administered).

Wireframing on Balsamiq

We began wireframing the game design on Balsamiq, and gathered feedback about the design from our professors.

Prototyping on Figma

We worked on a medium-fidelity prototype on Figma based on feedback gathered and added the interactive elements of the game (button clicks and keys). During this design process, several design decisions and iterations of the UI/UX were made - how we can show the energy and alertness levels, how information is conveyed to the user (nurse pop-up text or nurse speech above the NPC), as well as how the user can treat the patient (whether the user should click icons on the interface or use a key on their keyboard). 

Development of the Game on Unity

I worked on the development of the UI of the game. For example, how the energy and alertness levels of the user drops as well as the changing of scenes when a button is being clicked. My team & I then integrated parts of our code together and showcased our design to the client.

Logo Design

To convey the objective of the game in the logo, I had in mind several graphics such as a hospital and a doctor in a rush.

I wanted the logo to bring out a sense of seriousness since it was a game designed for doctors, and yet convey a sense of mystery as players would not know what they will have to manage in the game at the start.

Additionally, I wanted to use red as it signifies and builds a mental model around the idea of an emergency at the hospital. During the iterations, I realized that I could also play with the "A" in "Call" since the hospital resembled the letter "A".

Reflection:

Designing a 3D game on Figma is not easy! But you can work around it and communicate with your developers!

Before the class began, I started to learn C# programming and the basics of Unity by myself. Overall, I enjoyed the freedom of being able to both design and develop the UI of the game. Additionally, I learnt about the human psychology behind gamification and the use of the octalysis model to analyze a serious game. As a game designer, I learnt the importance of having clear game objectives and a scoring system before any design or development of the game was being done.

Moving forward, I am extremely excited to see how serious games can have a significant impact in healthcare.