King’s College London

3+ years

King’s College London is home to The Twins Early Development Study (TEDS), involving over 15,000 pairs of twins. The main goal of TEDS is to use behavioral genetic methods to find out how nature (genes) and nurture (environments) can explain why people differ with respect to their cognitive abilities, learning abilities and behaviors.

The challenge was to make the tedious and hard cognitive capacity measuring test process more fun – thus reducing dropouts – while keeping the data scientifically valid.

We created a gamified test platform for which we created digital versions of tests previously done on paper. An overarching medieval-themed fantasy story was written to give the tests context. The player/test subject was kept engaged with an ever developing visual (a computer-game-style castle being built).

Being a small part of the lifelong study, which has already made groundbreaking discoveries, is something that we are all proud of.

Martin Leet, Project Manager