Our work is driven by a methodological approach termed Design-based Research (DBR), which aims to improve education or training practices through iterative analysis, design, development and implementation of effective interventions. It involves collaboration amongst researchers and practitioners in real world settings. We are investigating how auditory perceptual learning, educational technologies, and computer-based games can be combined into an approach to training that is personalised to individual needs and preferences and can be delivered outside the laboratory, on home computers or mobile devices. The approach reconsiders how auditory training is delivered as a life-long and life-wide intervention, by establishing a clear distinction between auditory testing and auditory training. The work focuses on: (i) designing multiple casual games for training on a range of specific auditory tasks, (ii) defining user-centred adaptive methods of delivery suitable for micro-adaptation (at the level of human-computer interaction), meso-adaptation (at the level of game structure) and macro-adaptation (at the level of training intervention), (iii) deploying casual games within an intervention-based and user-centred web platform.

The long-term vision is to generalise experiences to design into guidelines, principles, shared software components, and authoring toolkits, open to the wide game development and auditory training community for contribution to an open-source repository of auditory learning games.