Incremental Design of Therapeutic Music Games : Theory and Application to the Treatment of Behavioral Disorders and Alzheimer's Disease

Healthcare serious gaming is a booming sector, the actors of which intend tomake medical care more motivating and human by infusing it with fun. Similarly, music therapygreatly emphasizes the search for musical fun and is increasingly popular among physiciansand patients alike, particularly for the treatment of behavioral disorders (Autism, borderlinepersonality disorder...) and neurodegenerative conditions (Alzheimer's, Parkinson's...). To buildupon this synergy, this thesis presents an Action Research methodology for the conception ofmusic therapy games using off-the-shelf components such as the Wiimote. The aim is to create,in close collaboration with healthcare practitioners, systems that are: - (1) modular and adaptedto the specific needs of the target populations, both in terms of accessibility and personal tastes;- (2) simple and cheap to easily penetrate into clinical environments, which are often very rigiddue to budget constraints. After describing our methodology in detail, we present twoapplications, projects MAWii (in collaboration with Paris Descartes) and MINWii (in collaborationwith Saint-Maurice and Broca hospitals), respectively targeting children suffering frombehavioral disorders and patients with Alzheimer's disease. We then compare these two studiesand propose a set of guidelines that will help create better adapted and less costly musictherapy games in the future.