Inspiration
We started by exploring challenges facing Canada’s aging population, particularly seniors living in long-term care homes. Loneliness and limited opportunities for meaningful engagement can take a toll on their well-being. Meanwhile, caregivers have to balance understanding residents’ needs with planning and facilitating activities.
As people who enjoy gaming, we know how easily games can bring people together. They’re a source of fun, connection, and shared experiences across generations. We wanted to bring some of that joy into long-term care by creating personalized activities that encourage cognitive stimulation and social connection, while giving caregivers useful insights into residents’ interests and helping ease some of their workload.
What it does
Grove is a short, caregiver-guided check-in where a caregiver sits with a resident to play a set of games for 3–4 minutes that feel more fun compared to a test. The games are each built around an item from the interRAI cognitive assessments that care homes already use. Scores save automatically and are compared against each resident’s own normal, never against others. Caregivers can then see the trends and the data for each resident, and flags that explain themselves and suggest a next step. The games used for measurement stay consistent even as the difficulty adapts, so scores remain comparable over time. Staff receive a clear, simple summary and can decide whether a formal assessment is worth doing. Grove never diagnoses anything. It simply points staff toward changes that might deserve a closer look between scheduled assessments.
How we built it
We used Claude and ChatGPT Pro to research the problem, refine our ideas and draft a design doc that defined our users, mapped out workflows for residents and caregivers, and listed questions to validate with PointClickCare. We then picked four interRAI items, designed a game around each one, and built Grove in a day as a single web app with voice input, clear rules for when changes get flagged, and Claude for plain-language summaries. Throughout, we held onto two principles: Grove supports caregivers rather than replacing them, and a game score is never treated as a diagnosis.
Challenges we ran into
Our biggest challenge was deciding exactly who Grove is for, since residents range from having no diagnosis to living with mild cognitive impairment or moderate dementia, and a tablet won’t work for everyone. We also had to rethink our usual design habits to make the games truly accessible for seniors, focusing on large text, big buttons and simple stories, while making sure caregivers can tap for residents and paper stays available. Finally, we worked carefully on how flags are worded so they prompt a closer look without causing alarm or implying a diagnosis.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We’re proud that we found a way to create a positive experience for seniors while also making the job of staff easier. Instead of sitting through a paper assessment, residents get to play a short, friendly game that feels like a story, and caregivers get results that save them time, clear flags with suggested next steps, and more time to spend with the people they care for.
What we learned
Through this project, we learned about a huge gap in the health care system when it comes to supporting staff, and how much time caregivers lose to paperwork that could be spent with residents. We also learned how to collaborate as a team of multiple people using AI to research, plan and build a product together in a very short time. Most of all, we learned that accessible design has to come first, because clear instructions and forgiving interactions matter far more than clever mechanics when a resident needs to comfortably play.
What's next for Grove
Next, we want to support residents with advanced dementia through a passive sensor that picks up changes without needing a game, and explore physical signals like grip strength, balance and vital signs alongside cognitive results. Since Grove isn’t a validated clinical tool yet, we plan to pilot it with care facilities to confirm which measurements track meaningful change, and ultimately integrate with PointClickCare so flags appear right inside the workflows caregivers already use.
