Design Concept
The ADHD Escape Room is short hands-on experience in which the player is completely immersed within the environment, from feeling genuine pressure to great satisfaction. Players will get side-tracked, distraction-indulge, and chaotically puzzle their way to successfully ‘escape’. Meanwhile, their ADHD symptoms (e.g., times distracted, times fidgeted, etc.) are tracked and tallied via Arduino switches for a final statistics screen.
Originating from an idea of an “ADHD Simulator”, the escape room has integral messaging and passively educates, while being presented as a fun parody of traditional escape rooms. The project reflects the struggles and strengths of the disorder, including some insights. This is reflected in the gameplay, such as several tasks requiring ‘acting like ADHD’ to solve, and others seeing players actively fighting against the overwhelm.
AIMS
1. Tackle a serious, real-world disorder by shaping it in an enjoyable and playful way
2. Instead of a ‘user, this interactive design has a ‘player’– instead of explicitly telling a user about ADHD struggles, they personally experience it first-hand
3. Destigmatise and address myths of ADHD
4. Empower the ADHD community
Technical Overview
The ADHD symptoms are tallied throughout each player’s run of the escape room. This is done via an ample number of micro limit switches housed within thin pads underneath/within each item that is considered one of the symptoms. For example, a fidget cube is a great ADHD tool for providing sensory stimulation and thus aiding focus. Within the room lies a fidget cube, which, if interacted with is detected and sent via Arduino to the connected computer using NodeJS & Socket.io with the help of the Mac’s terminal program to add +1 tally to the ‘fidgeting’ ADHD symptom. Each of the symptoms (distracted, aided focus with fidgetting, creatively inspired & sensory overload) get tallied on the locally-hosted HTML website to present the player with their statistics of each once they ‘escape’ the escape room. This caps their passive simulation and evolves it into an active educational experience, leaving them with a thought-provoking insight.
