Joost Hermans

Joost Hermans works as researcher at Games For Health. He studied Sociology at Utrecht University. His area’s of interest are game design, meaningfull human relations, social networks and public management. He wrote his master’s thesis at Games for Health Europe on the role of meaningful relationships in caring for the elderly. He uses scientific knowledge on sociology to build concepts which he hopes make the world a slightly better place. In his spare times he likes sports (running, boothcamp and skiing), reading and a lot of social activities.

PRESENTATION at Track 4

Can we trigger people to cooperate within social networks with affective game design? And if so, also one billion?

Games for Health Project has defined a moonshot ‘within 5 years 1 billion people who have had a meaningful experience with games of Games for Health Projects.’ The moonshot is defined because we think that we have to put many existing treatment paths upside down, cause disruption and create happiness. The moonshot is based on the assumption that we may create affective games that trigger people to cooperate in their networks. The focus of the presentation is on this topic. The social and business implications of wrong assumptions are not insignificant. In our presentation we show that the Dutch government assumes that business-case ‘elderly care by their children is driven by affective motivations’ may be falsified. Based on the Netherlands Kinship Panel Survey (NKPS N=2832, wave), we statistically regressed the relationship between the intensity of elderly care by children and the extent of affection in their relation and strength of normative values of children’s responsibility for parents while taking account of standard co-variates (age, household composition). A number of hypotheses were formulated and tested. It turns out the findings may have profound impact on the ‘1 billion moonshot.’

Co authors

Dr. Rob Tieben, Games Solutions Lab, Eindhoven, The Netherlands (First author and presenter)
Dr. Roland Goetgeluk, Games for Health Projects, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Prof. Dr. Ir. Vincent Buskens, Prof Theoretical Sociology, Utrecht University, The Netherlands

PRESENTATION at Dutch Program 3

IBM Watson in zelfmanagement en monitoring