Tau

Inspiration

We were inspired by apps such as Memory Lane and Impulse, designed to improve memory through games, similar to Tau. Also, we've experienced family members suffering from Alzheimer’s disease before, and were driven to possibly contribute to the field of neurodegenerative studies.

What it does

Tau consists of 3 games with varying difficulties and skills they test. The first game, Cosmic Cards, is a simple and recognizable card-matching game designed to test and exercise memory. The second game, Grocery List, requires users to repeatedly select an item from an ever-growing list that they have not clicked yet. This is harder than the previous game, also designed to exercise one's memory. The final game, Tide Tap, has users follow a complex set of rules for which side of their screen to select. This tests the reflexes of the users and aims to improve attention span.

How we built it

We utilized the Flutter extension in VS Code, first brainstorming what exact pages and features we needed to have (that was still realistic given our current coding abilities), then utilizing a top-down design to code each chunk of each page in several smaller parts.

Challenges we ran into

This app was the first project that both of us had made using Flutter and Dart in general, so learning about all its unique features ended up being much more difficult than either of us expected. In particular, beginning to understanding its hierarchy of widgets, and even learning how to manually code each object's position (as opposed to low/no code apps like Scratch) came with a bit of a learning curve.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

In particular, we're most proud of making a final product that functions as a multipage website instead of previous projects such as minigames and smaller coding exercises. In particular, building a navigation system without error and figuring out completely new concepts to us (such as implementing maps and sets) was pretty satisfying in the end.

What we learned

In terms of our research: Abd-alrazaq, A., Abuelezz, I., Al-Jafar, E. et al. The performance of serious games for enhancing attention in cognitively impaired older adults. npj Digit. Med. 6, 122 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-023-00863-2 In terms of our coding abilities: Much of the fundamentals of Flutter--such as implementing/manipulating widgets and importing images to our project--as well as the more specific features, such as the initState method and even the Future class.

What's next for Tau

We plan on doing user testing on those who are suffering from neurodegenerative diseases in both early and later stages of diseases to gain feedback on the app and identify improvements in accessibility and overall function. We then hope to publish the app onto the web and promote its use. We will also add additional games that provide a larger variety for users, as well as a personal tracker of the user's app history, such as their performance in games, to identify possible improvements.

Built With

• dart
• flutter