Evaluating the Adoption of the Physical Board Game Ludo for Automated Assessments of Cognitive Abilities

Serious games present a valuable tool for continuous cognitive assessments especially in the case of elderly, where there is a lack of cognitive tools to continuously assess the transitory conditions that occur between normal cognition and cognitive failure. However, designing games for elderly poses distinctive challenges since one has to take into account the limited experience of today's elderly with digital gameplay interfaces like touch screens that are second-nature to younger players. In this paper we present an initial user study with young and healthy subjects where we evaluate a computer-vision based digitalization process that is necessary to turn a physical version of the board game "Ludo" into an automated assessment tool. We further evaluate to which extend this tool presents a valid alternative to assess the strategic cognitive capabilities of a person. We have chosen Ludo in its physical form after careful consideration together with elderly and caregivers since many elderlies know this game from their childhood and thus do not need to learn new game rules or to adapt to digital environment.