Gamification and Autism

My Name is Sherine Ashraf Safwat. I study Digital Media Engineering at the German university in Cairo. The German university in Cairo is a private university supported by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).

Currently, I am on the 9th semester and still have another semester before graduation. I finished my bachelor project at DHBW Stuttgart under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Carmen Winter. It took 6 months of hard work to finish the project, starting from March 2015 till August 2015. For me, this was the most important experience in my life that taught me a lot not only on the academic level, but the personal one too.

My bachelor project was a research paper about Gamification and Autism. Autism is one of the famous developmental brain problems around the world. People affected by autism have severe social skills difficulties such as communication problems. They have to train a lot to enhance their skills according to their diagnostic cases. As technology is taking part of everything about people's life, gamification can be used as part of the treatment and improving the communication skills of people with autism. This happens by applying game design elements in real life to reach certain goals. The research paper of “Gamification and Autism” is more about autistic adults to discover the best electronic device for them and the effect of gamification on their communication and treatment. It reports on results from interviews with six people with different backgrounds having a direct or indirect relation with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The gamification can have promising results for communication and treatment of autistic adults. In addition, autistic people love electronic devices so they are good at using them. Finally, new ideas for applications are found that can be helpful for people with autism.