Mobile Escape-Game Lab: Development and Usability Study

The Mobile Escape-Game Lab (MEGL) functions as a relocatable, trailer-based platform designed to standardize the delivery of cognitive and physical health assessments. By embedding standardized tasks—such as balance tests, digital trail-making, and object search modules—within an immersive, narrative-driven escape-room environment, the system aims to enhance participant engagement and data comparability across community-based research sites. This approach seeks to overcome traditional barriers to health monitoring by providing a mobile, consistent, and interactive testing space suitable for future longitudinal applications, particularly among older populations.

A usability study involving 12 healthy adults confirms the platform’s functional stability and capacity to capture granular process data, including movement-state sequences and performance metrics. Participants interacted with an automated chatbot to navigate four distinct task modules, resulting in a System Usability Scale score of 71.25. This score, combined with positive qualitative feedback, indicates that the platform successfully integrates complex health-monitoring tasks into an engaging, user-friendly experience. The use of advanced sensing technology and automated action recognition further supports the platform’s potential as a reliable tool for objective data collection.

Despite these promising results, the study identifies critical areas for refinement to ensure the system is ready for broader clinical use. Participants highlighted a need for improved instruction clarity, more intuitive task flow, and streamlined onboarding processes to minimize the requirement for technical intervention. While the current findings validate the platform’s foundational usability and technical feasibility, further research is necessary to test the system across more diverse demographic groups. Future efforts will focus on these iterative improvements and longitudinal validation to establish the clinical effectiveness of the Mobile Escape-Game Lab as a standardized health-monitoring solution.