A Mobile Game for Training Shopping Skills for People With Intellectual Disabilities.

People with intellectual disabilities (PID) often experience problems whenever they want to do shopping. They have difficulties making shopping lists, searching items in the shop, reading prices, choosing the right coins or bills, calculating what their change should be, etc. Studies show that using mobile apps can help PID to cope with these difficulties, to involve them in a public life and potentially improve their everyday life skills. This article presents a tablet game that trains shopping skills in a virtual shopping environment. The game is developed as a part of a tablet app for supporting shopping process of PID, including making the shopping list, choosing goods in the shop and paying for it. The app has two modes: a real-time mode and a training mode. In a real time mode the application can be used to help PID making real purchases in real shops. The training mode is implemented as a game for virtual shopping and is applicable for the users even if they can't read and count. The game was developed starting from the needs and requirements of PID and Human-centered design and design thinking approaches were used for the development of the game. In order to make the game usable to people with different intellectual disabilities, the game interface is configurable and was designed using template-based technologies. The interface templates include mandatory and optional elements. Mandatory elements reflect the app's functionality and are always present, regardless of the user. Optional elements can be included in the interface for a particular user, depending on his individual capabilities and preferences. For developing the user interface iterative design was used. Testing iterations were organized in MPI Oosterlo, a service center for PID in Flanders, Belgium. A total of more than ten clients of the center took part in testing the app; their participation has significantly improved the game interface and made it applicable in a real life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]