Informatics Students Partner with Pediatrics Professor to Gamify Sleep-Loss Test

Students from the UC Irvine Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences worked with Katharine Simon, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the School of Medicine, to gamify a sleep-loss test for children and teens.

By developing gamified app-based tasks that make gathering data easier and more efficient, six students at the UC Irvine Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Science (ICS) are working to help children and teens sleep better and ultimately improve their overall health and wellbeing. The project is part of the ICS Capstone program, and they will showcase their designs at the 2026 ICS Project Expo on June 4.

…

The team has partnered with Katharine Simon, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at UC Irvine School of Medicine and Assistant Director of Research in Sleep at Rady Children’s Hospital Orange County (formerly CHOC). She leads the Sleep, Learning, and Emotions in Pediatrics (SLEEP) Lab where they investigate developmental changes in sleep patterns and neurophysiology, and the impact of sleep on cognitive and mental health longitudinally. Her lab takes research tasks spanning memory, attention, and executive function that are typically administered only in lab settings and gamifies them in her HowRU app. Creating fun, interactive games that replicate in-lab performance on apps makes participation accessible to all and shows how young people behave in the real world.

The capstone team is currently gamifying the Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT), a standardized measure of attention often used in sleep research. In this game, participants are asked to respond as quickly as possible when a stimulus appears on the screen for 3 to 10 minutes. This repetitive, in-lab task measures sustained attention through reaction times, with lapses in responding quickly identified as a sensitive measure for sleep loss. The team’s capstone goal is to gamify this experience using sports-themed interactive games that make the task more engaging for children and teens while keeping it scientifically valid. They aim to produce 10-20 games and are the first to attempt gamifying the PVT in this way. Developing a fun, sport-themed PVT task could make a big difference in the world of pediatric research, where enjoyable tasks can increase interest in participating and completing the task across multiple days.

…

Dr. Simon has worked with ICS Capstone for the past three years and finds it a highly rewarding experience. “I think that this is an exceptional program at UC Irvine to have for this major, and it gives students hands-on experience,” she said. “And for me, as a faculty member, I have the opportunity to work with exceptionally talented students.”

She added, “They make a meaningful contribution to research as well. What they’re creating is what we will be using in research with kids. So it’s something that will continue to extend beyond their time here at school.”

Read the full article from the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences.