A graduate student is crouched over a laptop somewhere on the fifth floor of Dalhousie University’s Goldberg Computer Science Building, watching a tiny cartoon avatar avoid what appear to be floating viruses. The avatar gathers condoms. It detects blood tests. It becomes unhealthy when it encounters “unprotected sex.” The entire thing appears almost lighthearted and absurd on screen. To be honest, that’s the point.
The game is called STD Pong, and the student is Chinenye Ndulue, a candidate for a Master of Computer Science. He has spent months working with his supervisor, Dr. Rita Orji, to create something that straddles two worlds: a piece of entertainment that subtly serves as a piece of public health infrastructure. Originally from Nigeria, both researchers have observed the gradual spread of HIV and other STDs throughout parts of West Africa from a distance. As you listen to them discuss the project, you get the impression that it’s more than just an academic exercise. It seems more intimate.
The research from Dalhousie’s Human-Computer Interaction cluster is intriguing because of its reluctance to import Western presumptions in their entirety. Dr. Orji says, “Technology often has people from developed countries as the focus,” and the remark has a subtle edge. Open discussions about sex in homes or classrooms are still culturally sensitive in many parts of West Africa. As a result, young people frequently seek out advice from friends, which may or may not be accurate. Almost by accident, the smartphone has emerged as one of the few private spaces where people can genuinely ask questions without fear of repercussions.
STD Pong is attempting to close that gap. Although the game follows a well-known arcade format, there is hidden significance in the mechanics. Power-ups are more than just power-ups; they are lab tests and condoms that fortify the avatar in the same way that protective behavior fortifies an actual immune system. Unsterilized blades and dangerous encounters that are modeled to resemble real transmission routes are the hazards, not generic enemies. African physicians contributed to the early design, which focused on the nine most prevalent infections in the area. The characters have an African appearance. The plot has an African feel to it. That’s not an accident.
Here, too, the larger academic context is important. The Reward strategy is the most widely used persuasive technique in the field, according to a recent systematic review of 130 persuasive games published between 2001 and 2021. However, the same review uncovered an unexpected finding: there was a negative correlation between a game’s effectiveness and the number of strategies it contained. It’s not better to have more. It appears that restraint is effective. Much of the work being done by the Dalhousie team is subtly influenced by that discovery.
Unusually for a student project, STD Pong has already received recognition. Best poster at the ACM CHI conference in Montreal, which is the human-computer interaction research equivalent of the Oscars. The University of Waterloo’s 2018 Persuasive Technology Conference featured the best presentation. The most intriguing work in persuasive design isn’t always occurring at Meta or inside ad agencies, which is something the larger tech industry has been slow to recognize. Of course, awards like these don’t translate into commercial success. Sometimes it’s being done on a small budget in a university lab, targeting a demographic that most Silicon Valley product teams will never encounter.
The app is nearing the end of internal testing, and a public release in Africa is anticipated shortly. In order to get it into the hands of young people, Dr. Orji is already utilizing her network of NGOs and African universities. In order to determine whether the game genuinely modifies knowledge, attitudes, and behavior over time, a longitudinal study is also being developed. It’s still unclear if that hope will have an impact in the real world. However, it’s difficult to ignore the fact that there is now less of a distinction between a game and a public health tool.
