MemWaves

Inspiration

"We were both living a nightmare we couldn't wake up from," commented Mark, a 50-year-old man whose mother has been diagnosed with Alzheimers. As a disease that starts out with Dementia and gradually turns into lost of cognitive abilities, Alzheimers has been one of the biggest struggles families face for its ability to transform a family member to a "stranger." Though incurable, Alzheimers may be prevented and mitigated through cognition-training games such as puzzles. As a team of five, we wanted to create a platform where patients could both regain familiarity with their past life while having fun solving the puzzles. Thus, we have created our project MemWaves to accomplish that.

What it does

Our product aims to help Alzheimer’s patients regain familiarity with their past life through waves of puzzle solving of their past pictures. The Menu has three functions: Start Game, Accomplishment, and Settings. In "Setting", users could create their profile, choose their language, and upload pictures from their album to our online database system. In "Start Game", users are first able to select two levels of difficulty: 3x3 and 3x4, and then the picture of their choice. After that, based on their choices, users would be brought to a jigsaw puzzle game which would be timed and scored. After completing the game, they could either choose to "Play Again" or "Return to Menu." The scores of each play would be recorded and sent to the "Accomplishment" section in the Menu. In "Accomplishment," users are able to see how many fish species they have unlocked based on their points.

How we built it

We mainly constructed the app on android studio, where we built the menu, "Accomplishment", and "Setting." Then, we used Unity to complete the "Start Game," which is the jigsaw puzzle game, and incorporated to our project on Android Studio

Challenges we ran into

We had some trouble integrating our Unity Game into Android Studio. Specifically, it was because of the incompatibility of the Mac and Window system and the bug caused by the incorrect ways of integration. We managed to fix them after hours of debugging. We have also had small bugs here and there when writing both programs, and these were fixed while we polished the codes. Our biggest challenge would be the shortage of time in building a full-functional app. This is not yet fixed, but we are mitigating it using high productivity propelled by caffeine and sleep deprivation caused by some trade off of resting time.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are very proud that we are able to figure something out and construct a functioning app from scratch in such short amount of time. We are also very proud that our app is solely designed by ourselves, including the layouts and backgrounds.

What we learned

Hardskill-wise, we have familiarized ourselves with Unity, Android Studio, and the language of C#. Softskill-wise, we have enhanced our ability in working in a group setting, specifically collaboration, distribution of labor, and communication skills.

What's next for MemWaves

Currently, the next steps would be 1) create read-in files in Android Studios to access the user score in the file outputted from Unity and print it in accomplishment. 2) Set up more options of unlocking the fish-species in Accomplishment page 3) increase more levels and options for the user to choose; 4) perfect our designs of the buttons and other visible functions.