Independent Study: Maria

Why We Chose a Racing Game Over Whack-a-Mole for Elderly Rehabilitation

The Design Dilemma

Midway through our project, as our hardware began to take shape, our team ran into a question that wouldn't go away. Our E-Pillow could already detect leg pressure through its force sensors — we knew the cushion would respond to movement. But pressure data alone doesn't make a product worth using. Two games could trigger the same muscles, generate the same readings, and look almost identical on a spec sheet — yet feel completely different to the person actually playing them. Real engagement — the kind elderly users come back to day after day — lives in something deeper than mechanics. It lives in tone, in pacing, in dignity. And capturing all of that requires choosing the right game, not just any game.

So I faced a fork in the road. The first option was a reactive, score-driven Whack-a-Mole game, where users would press down quickly as moles popped up across three pads. It was simple, familiar, and easy to build. The second option was a self-paced, scenery-driven racing game, where a car would roll forward on its own and users would tilt left or right to collect coins along an unfolding landscape. It was harder to design, but quieter, gentler, and far more open-ended. On paper, both would work. Both would activate the same muscle groups and produce similar movement data. The harder question was which one elderly users would actually want to keep playing.

I framed my independent study around one focused question:

"What kind of game makes elderly users want to keep playing — and therefore keep exercising — over weeks, not minutes?"

Five Principles I Drew On

To answer that question, I grounded my investigation in five principles drawn from gerontology, cognitive psychology, and human-computer interaction research.

The first is that curiosity thrives on manageable information gaps — users stay engaged when they sense something interesting just ahead, but only if the gap feels approachable rather than overwhelming. The second is that autonomy is the engine of long-term motivation: when users feel forced or rushed, intrinsic motivation collapses, and elderly users are particularly sensitive to feeling pressured or patronized. The third is that flow depends on a careful balance between challenge and skill — too easy becomes boring, too hard becomes anxiety, and the elderly flow window is narrower than most designers realize.

The fourth principle is perhaps the most important for our project: the aging brain favors proactive over reactive cognition. Raw reaction speed declines steeply with age, but the ability to anticipate, plan, and pace oneself remains strong well into later life. Games that reward speed punish the elderly brain. Games that reward anticipation work with it. The fifth and most decisive principle is that failure states corrode engagement in older adults. Buzzers, "game over" screens, and visible records of failure don't just frustrate elderly users — they make them quietly stop using the product altogether. Dignity, it turns out, is not a soft concern; it is a hard determinant of whether a device gets used.

The Verdict

When I evaluated both game concepts against these five principles, the contrast was clearer than I expected.

Whack-a-Mole, despite its simplicity and familiarity, has a fundamental problem: it asks elderly users to compete in the very ability that declines most steeply with age — reaction speed. Every missed mole becomes a small reminder of slowness. Every buzzer becomes a tiny "you failed." Over a single session, this might be tolerable. Over weeks of daily use, it becomes corrosive to motivation, dignity, and ultimately to the therapy itself. The game can technically be played — but it cannot be enjoyed in any sustainable way.

The racing game inverts that equation entirely. Coins appear several seconds ahead of the car, giving users time to see, plan, and tilt — engaging the proactive cognition older adults excel at. There is no timer, no health bar, no game-over screen. Distance only ever accumulates. The landscape only ever unfolds. The user is no longer "doing therapy." They are taking a journey. It loses something on adrenaline and competition, but it gains everything on calm, continuity, and the quiet feeling of forward motion.

"Whack-a-Mole is a game elderly users can play.
Racing is a game elderly users want to play.
In rehabilitation, that difference is everything."

Conclusion

Rehabilitation only works when it is sustained. A single perfect therapy session is far less useful than a slightly imperfect routine repeated every day for a year — because recovery is not a moment, it is a trajectory. It is the slow accumulation of strength, the gradual return of mobility, the quiet rebuilding of confidence in a body that has lost trust in itself. Sustaining that trajectory has historically been the hardest part of home rehabilitation. The right game is the first thing that makes it feel possible.

Choosing the racing game over Whack-a-Mole was not an aesthetic preference. It was a recognition that the bottleneck in elderly rehabilitation has never really been exercise design. It has been exercise return — the question of whether a user comes back tomorrow, and the day after, and the month after that. Reactive, score-driven games create friction with the aging brain, and friction is the silent reason most home rehabilitation fails. A self-paced, scenery-driven game removes that friction entirely. It transforms exercise from a clinical task into an ambient experience — one that can quietly accompany a user, day after day, without ever asking them to perform. The goal was never to make elderly users compete — but to invite them to explore. When we get that invitation right, exercise stops feeling like medicine and starts feeling like life.