Customer: Astrid Lindgrens barnsjukhus, Karolinska Universitetssjukhuset
Dimhs services: workshop, concept development, game design, UX/UI, graphics, game development, target audience testing
Stick Adventure
Together with Henrik Hjelmgren, Karolinska University Hospital and Astrid Lindgren’s Children's Hospital, we have developed two digital tools consisting of a mobile app and an AR game, aimed at the primary target group of children aged 5-15 years.
The innovation "Stick Adventure" addresses the societal phenomenon of needle fear in children, with the mobile app designed to help children prepare for a needle prick and to process the procedure after it has been carried out.
The AR game is meant to help the child during a needle-related procedure by distracting from the pain experience. The child wears AR glasses, where one of the advantages being that the child has control over what is happening in the treatment room during the needle prick while also being able to play the game. The game involves taking care of trees that appear in the room. The child waters the trees, watches them grow larger, and sees a squirrel (also featured in the mobile app) move in and jump around among the treetops. The child can also initiate their own water fights with the staff and accompanying adult, where no one actually gets wet.
Stick Adventure can be downloaded for free from the App Store and Google Play Store starting in January 2023.
Augmented Reality is physically available at Astrid Lindgren’s Children’s Hospital.
Stick Adventure has been developed with financial support from Vinnova.
Process
Workshop
The collaboration began with a workshop in Stockholm to capture the purpose and expectations for the games. To gain an understanding of what children at the hospital experience with regard to needle pricks, Dimh first accompanied a study visit to Astrid Lindgren’s Children’s Hospital. Following this, a joint analysis of the target group was conducted to identify the children’s needs and how these needs could be met.
Concept
When we at Dimh began the concept work, we focused on the needs of the target group that emerged during the workshop. Since there were multiple needs to address, we divided the solution into a mobile app focused on learning and rehabilitation, and an AR app focused on distraction during needle pricks.
The result of the concept development was a living design document that described how the mobile and AR games could look and function, but with room for adjustments during the development process. The images, along with the accompanying descriptive text, could then be shown to the target group to gather feedback.
Testing with the target audience
To ensure that the mobile and AR games met the target group’s needs and expectations, target audience testing was conducted both in the middle and at the end of the development phase. Adjustments were then made based on the feedback from the target group.
For Dimh, target audience testing is a very important part of the process. It ensures that we are heading in the right/wrong direction, while also providing a foundation for our reasoning when making decisions.
Development
The development of Stick Adventure was done through an iterative process, where parts of the mobile and AR games have been presented to the client throughout the development. A major advantage of this is that the client has been involved throughout the process, allowing them to share images or materials with the target group to gather feedback, while we at Dimh have been able to capture feedback early, when there was still time to make adjustments or change direction.
With a dedicated and meticulous development team, who were involved from the start and throughout the entire process, Stick Adventure was launched in October 2022.
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