Understanding Hospitalized Pediatric Cancer Patients’ Activities for Digital Games Design Requirements

This research aims to understand activities performed by pediatric cancer patients at the pediatric oncology ward. The focus of this study is to identify activities performed by patients during their stay in the hospital. 10 parents/guardians of the patients were interviewed to collect the information and description of activities performed by patients under their care. A thematic analysis was conducted to analyze all collected and transcribed interviews. The result shows that pediatric cancer patients express either positive or negative feeling. This feeling is based on their actions in the ward. The consequences from this are alarming: pediatric cancer patients are in high stress and depressed which would not be good for their health. The understanding of their activities in the ward can be transformed into design requirements for designing patient support games. Moreover, designers and developers of games can refer to this finding to compare their current existing games for cancer patients to the actual of the activities performed by the patients.